The RSVP: A Forbidden Office

Romance Standalone (The Virgin

Society Book 1) Lauren Blakely
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THE RSVP
LAUREN BLAKELY
 CONTENTS

Copyright
Also By Lauren Blakely
Author’s Note
About The RSVP

Did you know?

The RSVP
The Crush
Prologue
1. The Man in Purple
2. All Your Broken Bones
3. Is It Obvious?
4. Lucky New York
5. This Color Would Look Good on You

The RSVP
1. Maybe Now
2. Shirt Memories
3. My Dirty Little Secret
4. Much to the Chagrin
5. Some More Some Time
6. Maybe Accomplices
7. Debriefing The Crew
8. Definitely Mostly The Line
9. Happy Birthday To Me
10. The Double Text
11. And I Give In
12. That Extra Inch
13. Big Desk
14. Everything To Lose
15. Check Mate
16. Like Cherry
17. Everyone Wants Something
18. The Virgin Society
19. Very Different Somethings
20. Things We Ignore
21. Tiger
22. A Champagne Kiss
23. A Thank You Gift
24. Just Some Book
25. My Boycott Grave
26. Can I Tell You?
27. Lost and Found
28. Brown Paper, That’s All
29. You Are Just
30. Don’t Fall
31. Anyone in Particular?
 32. Innocent and Seductive
33. An Indecent Kiss
34. Partners in Crime
35. Pedestals and Princesses
36. Ten Times
37. My Gift
38. Find me in the Rain
39. Win Some, Lose Some
40. Special Guest
41. How To Rob The Bank
42. The Best-Laid Plans
43. Someone
44. Lovely Little Lie
45. Ride or Die
46. And the Award Goes To…
47. My Diner Dreams
48. Definitely Found
49. Opening Number
50. Unfinished Business
Epilogue
Final Epilogue
Sneak Peeks

Also by Lauren Blakely

Contact
 COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2023 by Lauren Blakely

LaurenBlakely.com
Cover Design by © TE Black
Photo: Wander Aguiar

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means whatsoever without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and
incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author
acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this
work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is
not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
 ALSO BY LAUREN BLAKELY

Big Rock Series

Big Rock
Mister O
Well Hung
Full Package
Joy Ride
Hard Wood

The Dating Games Series

The Virgin Next Door
Two A Day
The Good Guy Challenge
My So-Called Sex Life

Happy Endings Series

Come Again
Shut Up and Kiss Me
Kismet
My Single-Versary

Ballers And Babes

Most Valuable Playboy
Most Likely to Score
A Wild Card Kiss

Rules of Love Series

The Virgin Rule Book
The Virgin Game Plan
The Virgin Replay
The Virgin Scorecard

Hopelessly Bromantic Duet (MM)

Hopelessly Bromantic
Here Comes My Man

Men of Summer Series (MM)

Scoring With Him
Winning With Him
All In With Him

The Guys Who Got Away Series

Dear Sexy Ex-Boyfriend
The What If Guy
Thanks for Last Night
The Dream Guy Next Door

The Gift Series

The Engagement Gift
The Virgin Gift
The Decadent Gift

The Extravagant Series

One Night Only
One Exquisite Touch
My One-Week Husband

MM Standalone Novels
A Guy Walks Into My Bar
One Time Only
The Bromance Zone
The Best Men (Co-written with Sarina Bowen)

The Heartbreakers Series

Once Upon a Real Good Time
Once Upon a Sure Thing
Once Upon a Wild Fling

Boyfriend Material
Asking For a Friend
Sex and Other Shiny Objects
One Night Stand-In

Lucky In Love Series

Best Laid Plans
The Feel Good Factor
Nobody Does It Better
Unzipped

Always Satisfied Series

Satisfaction Guaranteed
Instant Gratification
Overnight Service
Never Have I Ever
PS It’s Always Been You
Special Delivery

The Sexy Suit Series

Lucky Suit
Birthday Suit

From Paris With Love

Wanderlust
Part-Time Lover

One Love Series

The Sexy One
The Only One
The Hot One
The Knocked Up Plan
Come As You Are

Standalones
Stud Finder
The V Card
The Real Deal
Unbreak My Heart
The Break-Up Album

The Caught Up in Love Series

The Pretending Plot
The Dating Proposal
The Second Chance Plan
The Private Rehearsal

Seductive Nights Series

Night After Night
After This Night
One More Night
A Wildly Seductive Night
 AUTHOR’S NOTE

Several years ago, I released a book titled 21 Stolen Kisses. For many reasons, that book has been
retired completely and has been off sale since early 2021. It will remain off sale forever. However,
some of the getting-to-know-you scenes in that book served as the inspiration for character traits for
Bridger and Harlow — such as their love of Broadway shows, the Skittle Toes, the bike crash into
the cab, and the shirt obsession. All of those aspects of the prior story have been massively revised to
fit this brand new storyline with all new characters.
 ABOUT THE RSVP

Our days are full of secrets. Our nights are for seduction…
For the last year, I’ve wanted someone I can’t have.
The man my father built his latest multimillion dollar business with.
He’s a decade older than I am, and he’s entirely forbidden.
The fact that he’s never given me a second glance only makes me long for him more.
But the other night, across the room at a gala, everything changed. His broody gaze lingered on me
and grew darker.
So I’m officially done being the good girl.
Tomorrow I turn 21. As a gift to myself, I plan to seduce my father’s business partner.
Happy birthday to me.
 DID YOU KNOW?

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 THE RSVP

Dear Reader,

Harlow and Bridger’s forbidden romance begins with a prelude, THE CRUSH. If you already read
THE CRUSH when it was released on its own, go ahead and start at THE RSVP! If not, then start
right here and turn the page. The prequel is a key part of their romance — you don’t want to miss it!

Xoxo
Lauren
THE CRUSH
 PROLOGUE

Harlow

I didn’t hit the car on purpose. I wasn’t that obsessed. I wouldn’t have called it an obsession at all.
Besides, I’m not that devious.
I’d say I’m more crafty.
But a year ago, I was neither devious nor crafty. I was just a girl with the start of a crush.
Everything that happened that night was just the luck of the draw.
I wound up a little bruised—fine, a little broken—and intoxicated by a man I couldn’t have.
 1

THE MAN IN PURPLE

Harlow

Several Months Ago

The office door clicks open. I look up from the French news site on my laptop and sit straighter at the
dining room table.
This is my chance to check him out. I’m home for the summer, so I’ve been grabbing as many
opportunities as I can. Furtively, I turn my gaze as my new crush exits my father’s plush home office,
then strides across the polished hardwood floors of the living room, wingtips clicking.
Sounding like money.
Looking like a magazine ad.
I’ve been stealing glances at Bridger for the last week, ever since I returned home from the NYU
dorms. I’ve known him for years, but when I saw him a few weeks ago at a dinner my father hosted,
my pulse surged and my skin tingled.
And a crush was born.
So, yeah, I love studying in the middle of my home, prepping for my next semester abroad. Just in
case I can catch a glimpse of him.
And I’ll have another one right now, thank you very much. From my vantage point at the imposing
oak table, I peek at the man’s gorgeous profile as he leaves, hoping he turns toward me soon so I can
steal a glance at his outrageously blue eyes. I want to know what’s behind them.
My father ruins the view, though, walking right behind him, a glass of Scotch in his hand, saying
goodbye to the man he built his media empire with over the last five years. “Sorry to cut this meeting
short,” my dad says wryly. Everything sounds wry in his English accent. Part of his charm, some say.
His American daughter isn’t fooled by his British charm.
Bridger laughs lightly as they walk through the living room, empty-handed. “No, you’re not, Ian.”
Dad wiggles a brow. “Fine, I’m not sorry.”
At least have the decency to pretend.
Bridger nears the door, and I’m just not that interested in the subjunctive tense this second.
Not with Bridger wearing that tailored purple shirt that hugs his arms, those trim charcoal slacks
that hint at a strong body, and no tie.
Never a tie.
Bridger’s tieless look is so…tingly.
“We’ll catch up tomorrow on the Spanish deal,” he says, scrubbing his hand along his chin.
Stubble lines his fine jawline. A faint dusting of dark brown hair, a seven o’clock shadow.
What would it feel like along my fingers? Against my face?
A shiver slides down my spine, and I suppress a murmur.
“Tomorrow for all things Spanish deal. But not too early, you know,” my dad says.
What? No wink? How else would one know what you’ll be up to?
I’m tempted to roll my eyes, but instead I seize the chance to inject myself into their business
conversation, flashing a knowing smile Bridger’s way. “Dad doesn’t like to wake early,” I say,
innocently.
Like I don’t know the real reason Dad will sleep in.
Like the real reason isn’t coming over in a few minutes.
Cassie. Or Lianne. Or Marie. Or whoever the latest lady is that my dad’s banging behind his
fiancée’s back.
Slowly, like maybe we’re both in on the joke, Bridger turns my way. My pulse kicks. His eyes are
dark blue, the color of the dawn before day takes over. They hold mine for a beat, then he looks away
quickly. I’m hopeful enough to want to believe he’s entertaining the same thoughts about dangerous
kisses.
But I’m smart enough to know he’s not.
“Yeah, I know,” he says, then he’s out the door.
Not even a smile. He’s just gone. But what did I expect? I’m simply his business partner’s
college-age daughter, ten years his junior.
I turn back to my laptop, ready to study.
Except…
With Bridger on his way, my father turns to me, checks his watch, then hums, like he’s gearing up
to make a request.
Whatever, Dad. You’re not going to shock me.
I close my laptop before he speaks.
“Harlow, love, do you think you could study in your room?”
Translation—be a good girl, put your earbuds in, blast some music, and pretend you hear
nothing while I fuck someone who’s not my fiancée.
I fake a smile. “Of course,” I say, swallowing down a spoonful of disgust.
“You’re such a darling,” he says.
I flash a bigger smile. “Thanks.”
Then, he disappears up the stairs. Naturally. He must go beautify himself before the lady shows
up.
She’ll probably be here in less than ten minutes. Like I am going to stay in my room for the next
several hours. I’m not even going to stay in this house.
There’s a big city out there for me to escape into.
I grab my backpack from the dining room floor, stuff my laptop in it, and sling it over my shoulder.
Maybe when I reach Big Cup, I’ll tell Dad I left.
But then again, maybe I won’t. Chances are he won’t notice or care.
When I stuff my phone into the pouch of my backpack, the sound of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5
blasts from Dad’s phone on the coffee table in the living room.
It’s his fiancée calling. Joan’s in Vermont teaching a symposium on classical music. Poor Joan. I
like her well enough, considering I’ve only lived with her for the last two summer breaks.
His cell rattles again, the violin announcing her interest in talking to her fiancé. Not my problem.
Not my problem. Not at all my problem.
I ignore it as I pad quietly to the door. It opens into an outside alcove. My bike’s in there. I’m
almost free from alibi duty.
Footsteps shuffle upstairs. “Harlow, love,” he calls out.
I tense.
Don’t do it. Don’t ask.
“Can you grab Joan’s call and tell her I’m in a meeting with Bridger?”
And he’s asked.
I burn, but I say nothing as I reach for the knob, stuffing in my earbuds. Useful prop. But soon, I’ll
need Sondheim, Larsen or Miranda to cleanse my ears.
For now, the violin becomes more urgent. So does my need to go. I turn the knob.
The sound of footsteps grows louder. “Harlow, can you answer that, please?”
Flames lick higher in me as I weigh my options. Pretend I didn’t hear? Just leave? Or something
else. Like, hey, how about a no?
I hardly even live here anymore. I did enough of this in high school. Why do I have to do it during
college breaks too?
“Harlow,” he calls once more from the top of the stairs, standing by the banister now.
The violin insists.
He shouts my name. Too loud to ignore. Hand on the knob, I carelessly turn my gaze to him,
adopting a confused look as I point to my earbuds. After I take one out, I ask, “What did you say?”
He laughs, shaking his head. “Joan was calling. She’ll call again. I’ll just handle it,” he says,
waving a hand dismissively.
“How noble of you,” I mutter, too low for him to hear.
He peers at me curiously, cataloging my backpack, my fleece. “Are you leaving?”
Genius.
“Layla called. I’m meeting her at the coffee shop. Good luck with your Bridger meeting,” I say,
sketching air quotes. I leave before he can say another word.
He can deal with his affairs on his own. I’m not his alibi anymore.
I open the door, step into the alcove. There, I tug on my helmet, then grab my silver bike, hoisting
it by my shoulder. I leave the brownstone, rushing down the steps, fueled by righteous fire and rage.
He can screw his lady friend without any help from me. It’s not like he has me around in the fall
or the spring. He can’t use me during the summer.
Slapping the bike down, I hop on in a flurry. I jump off the sidewalk and right onto Eighty Third
Street, then race west on the smooth concrete.
Maybe, just maybe, I’ll catch one more glimpse of Bridger in the six o’clock sunset as I ride
down Fifth Avenue. He’ll be walking. He usually walks.
He’s only a few minutes ahead of me.
I bolt south on the avenue, sandwiching my body and the bike between the parked cars and the
cabs, the trucks and buses screeching downtown. Fast and furious, I want speed and distance. Far
away from my dad and his habits. His women showing up at all hours. Him asking me to disappear.
Here I am, disappearing into the New York night.
 It’s just me and the lights and the sounds and the streets of the city as I dodge the bullets the traffic
throws at me. I weave past a car turning into Central Park, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I
catch a flash of purple.
My heart surges. Bridger’s a block away. I pedal faster, darting past the cars to my left.
Maybe I’ll just hop over to the sidewalk, roll up beside him and say hi.
There’s a cab twenty feet ahead, pulling over to the curb.
Once I jam past it, I’ll—
But my phone rings. It’s Joan. Someone swings a cab door open five feet in front of me. The
wrong side—the traffic side, not the curb side.
Heart pounding terribly, I try to swerve, and I’m this close to making it when the door smacks my
elbow, and bam.
My bones rattle. My head rings. I’m toppling off the bike, my foot slamming into the tire, my head
smacking the pavement, all of New York saying fuck you to me too.
Pain radiates down to my marrow.
Twenty seconds later, a man in purple is over me, lifting me up, carrying me to the sidewalk.
Arms wrapped around me.
When the ambulance arrives five minutes later, he tells me he’ll meet me at the hospital.
Everything goes in and out of focus except for the screaming in my bones. And the wild thought
that occurs to me—maybe it’s the pain or the adrenaline, but I’m not sorry I lost that fight with the car
door.
 2

ALL YOUR BROKEN BONES

Harlow

I don’t call my dad on the way to the hospital. But after the nurse starts my IV, Bridger’s standing by
my bed in the emergency room, telling me, “Your dad will be here soon. I reached him.” He sounds so
cool, so in control.
Like he can handle any crisis.
Including finding my father while he’s finagling.
And, evidently, getting into my room in the ER. I don’t ask how he pulled it off. But that’s what
Dad’s told me Bridger does. Pulls things off. Gets things done.
“Why do people open doors into traffic?” I ask, my voice trembling more than I want it to. I don’t
want him to think I’m weak.
A gentle smile moves his lips. “People are terrible. But you’re going to be fine, Harlow. Ian is on
his way.”
I don’t care about Ian, though, or how Bridger tore him away from Marie or Cassie or Lianne.
“Thank you for being there.”
“I’m glad I was,” he says.
I feel hazy. Warm all over. Whatever they put in this IV for my broken ankle is good.
“Come see me tomorrow?” I ask. Maybe it’s a plea. Hard to tell.
The stuff in the IV is really good.
Bridger doesn’t answer right away. His jaw tics. He’s wavering. His blue eyes are chased with
conflict, his brow knitting.
I’m not above a little begging when I can blame it on the drugs. “Please,” I say with a frown. “It
would make me feel better.”
He nods, resigned perhaps. “You’re a good negotiator,” he says, giving in.
I tuck the compliment into my pocket as he gives me his number. “If you need anything and can’t
reach your dad.”
“Thanks,” I say, even though I’ve had Bridger’s number for some time. Dad gave it to me long ago
—here’s Joan’s number, here’s Bridger’s number, here’s the studio number.
I’ve never used it, but now I have permission.
When a nurse comes in to tell me it’s time to cast my ankle, he wishes me well and leaves.
My head CT scan is clear, so they send me home that night. My foot screams the next day, but
painkillers shut that down quickly, and soon I’m feeling pretty good.
I entertain visitors nonstop in my living room. Layla appears in the morning, bearing lip gloss and
nail polish. She’s an angel. Ethan brings tulips and gossip about our Carlisle Academy alum—the
former senior class president of the most elite prep school in Manhattan was just thrown out of Yale
after three years. Joan sends bouquets of dahlias, then calls, too, asking how I’m doing.
“I’ve been better,” I tell her, appreciating the motherly check-in.
After I get reacquainted with the joys of naptime, my brother FaceTimes from London, offering to
catch a flight to New York to be with me. I decline but ask Hunter to tell me stories of life in England.
All day long, Dad swings in and out of his home office down the hall to check on me. After he
orders a late lunch from my favorite Mediterranean restaurant, he tells me about the new storyline in
Sweet Nothings, probably to distract me.
Or maybe to distract himself till he sees whoever again.
“And then Josie and Sam get all caught up in this whirlwind fling,” he says. “We see them sneak
off to the wine cellar and the library.”
I have no interest in learning where his characters canoodle, but I feel too good to cut him off.
“Great, Dad. Tell me more.”
He unspools the next few episodes then checks his Victoire watch and pushes up from his chair. “I
have to nip off. I have a thing.” He shrugs, sheepish, and nods to the front door. “I’ll be back later, but
Bridger’s going to stop by too.”
“Oh?” I try to sound blasé.
I pulled off the nonchalant look, judging from Dad’s no big deal grin. “Yes, he wants to make sure
you’re okay. Good thing he was there to call 911.”
Dad leaves for his thing. The door has barely closed behind him when I grab my brush from the
coffee table, run it through my hair again, then slick on lip gloss. I glance at my shirt—a cute slouchy
top that goes with my shorts. Perfect.
A few minutes later, there’s a knock on the door. “Come in,” I shout. Bridger knows the code.
Bubbles bounce under my skin as Bridger unlocks the door. When the handsome, broody man
strides into the brownstone, those bubbles speed through me. I am effervescent.
He holds a bouquet of gerbera daisies. “Hey there.”
“Those are my favorite flowers.” Did I mention that in the hospital last night? Have I ever said
that at a dinner party, event, or gala where I saw him? I don’t know.
He peers around the living room, checking out vase after vase. The room is bursting with blooms.
“It’s a florist shop in here.”
“I might start a side hustle peddling flowers.” I point to his arrangement as he sets it on the coffee
table by the couch. “But I like yours best.”
“Thanks,” he says, evenly, like he has to be careful with me. Like he can’t reveal any emotion.
Understandable. I’ve known Bridger James since I was fifteen and his upstart production
company acquired the TV rights to Sweet Nothings. He was the wunderkind new producer who
spotted a hit and made it happen with my dad. They became partners, then, in growing that property to
global domination, turning the book series my mom had penned and Dad had inherited into a
worldwide phenom as a TV show. The risqué, racy soap opera counts legions of fans, and it started in
my home when the two of them worked late on the concept, refining it and then pitching it to a
network. Now, they own a renowned TV production company together called Lucky 21 that’s
responsible for Sweet Nothings, its spin-offs and other top shows too.
Over the last few years, Bridger’s hung around at my house late at night working, then shown up
early in the morning collecting Dad for meetings. I’ve seen him at fetes, galas, parties.
But someone else has always been around. Now it’s just the two of us, alone together for the first
time.
“Want a seat?” I ask, gesturing to the other chair.
As he sits, I catalog his appearance—he’s in his work uniform. Sharp pants, fine leather shoes,
and a tailored shirt. Today’s is a shade of deep, rich green.
“Nice cast,” Bridger says, gesturing to the pink cast on my foot.
“Evidently the cab door had it in for me. Have you ever broken a bone?” I ask, quickly shifting
away from my ankle injury.
“Many times,” he says with a sigh, but it’s a welcoming kind of sound, like been there, done that.
I sit a little straighter, eager for this chance to get to know him. “Tell me all your broken stories.”
He laughs curiously, eyeing me like he isn’t sure I mean the request. “Really?”
I’m not backing down. I want what I want. “Yes. Really.”
Here in my home, the day after a nasty crash, with my father off doing whatever, his handsome,
sexy, nearly inscrutable business partner wiggles three fingers on his right hand. “Broke these when
the center stepped on my hand during football practice in junior high.”
“You were the quarterback?” It delights me to no end, learning these details.
“Of course.” There’s a smirk on his face, like he couldn’t be anything but the team leader.
“Were you good at football?”
He tilts his head, his gaze a little challenging, a touch cocky. “What do you think?”
“Yes,” I say, feeling a bit fluttery. A bit naughty too.
“Good answer,” Bridger replies, sinking deeper into his chair, looking comfortable or maybe
even relaxed at last.
“How many games did you win? Touchdowns did you throw? Passing yards did you log?”
He raises an appreciative brow, whistling low. “Someone knows football.”
I bob a shoulder playfully. “I know a lot of things.”
His expression shifts, going dark for a second. Then he swallows and answers in a businesslike
tone. “I did well,” he says, like he rearranged his answer at the last minute.
I ease up on the Lolita. “What else did you break?” Surely, this is a less sexy comment. I hope it’s
enough for him to stay.
“I broke my kneecap a couple years later,” he says, recounting a high school injury.
“How’d you manage that?”
“Playing soccer my sophomore year. I planted my foot wrong while I was twisting around to try to
score, and then it snapped. Felt like it fell down to my shin.” He shakes his head in remembered pain,
wincing.
“That sounds terrible,” I say in sympathy. “Did it really fall to your shin?”
He taps the side of his calf under his black pants to show me where his kneecap had landed. “It
was knocked about two inches out of the socket.” He blows out a sharp breath. “That hurt.”
“That sounds like an understatement,” I say.
“Yeah, it is.”
“That’s awful,” I say, but I’m giddy for more of his stories, more of him.
 Just more.
He regales me with tales of his high school sports, from soccer games to football plays, till I say,
“Is that all you did growing up? Play sports?”
With a laugh, he shakes his head. “It wasn’t all I did, but I was good at sports for a while there.
Until I stopped playing,” he says, and I file that detail away as I keep listening. “Plus, I think my mom
just wanted to balance out all the show tunes and cabaret I’d grown up with. You know, just to give
me a full sense of the world.”
Is he for real? I nearly bolt out of the chair with excitement. “I love cabaret,” I say, breathless.
He shoots me a doubtful look. “You do?”
“Cabaret, show tunes, Broadway, you name it,” I say, enthused by this bond I didn’t know we had.
“Yeah?” His tone pitches up, maybe with excitement too.
“I do. I could spend all night in the theater,” I say, and that flirty purr returns to my voice,
unbidden.
Dammit. I didn’t mean to go there.
And I shouldn’t have, because Bridger glances around nervously, checks the ornate and ominous
clock on the living room wall—my dad had it shipped from his favorite shop in Knightsbridge—then
sighs. “I have a meeting,” he says. “I should go.”
Please don’t go.
But I know better than to sound desperate. “Of course. But you wouldn’t leave without signing my
cast, would you?”
There’s tension in his shoulders still as he reaches for the Sharpie on the table, then checks out my
cast. Layla and Ethan already commandeered most of the fiberglass real estate.
“Hmm. Not much room left,” he says, analytically, checking out the options.
But I saved a spot for him. Kept it virginal. “Right by the toes,” I say, pointing to the land he can
claim on me. “There’s a little space.”
I wiggle them, showing off my bright red and purple toenail polish. “My friend Layla painted them
this morning. She calls them Skittles toes.”
When Bridger meets my gaze, his blue eyes darken to the color of a midnight sky. “I’ll just sign
right here by those Skittles toes then.”
As he scratches out his signature near my candy-colored nails, his fingers skim against my toes.
A whoosh rushes through my body.
This is the first time he’s touched me.
I don’t intend for it to be the last.
 3

IS IT OBVIOUS?

Harlow

Three months later my cast is gone, and it’s time to wear heels again.
It’s a New York party night after all, and I’m not about to show up among the glitterati of
Manhattan in flats.
“I still can’t believe you’re leaving me to fend for myself tonight,” I whine to Layla after we
bound up the steps in Dad’s brownstone and turn into my old bedroom suite. She’s only staying for
thirty minutes at the party, and I feel betrayed already.
“I’m the worst. But trust me, I tried to get out of the charity board dinner that Mom is making me
go to,” she says, huffing.
“Too bad bailing isn’t an option,” I say, heading for the closet. But it would be poor form to ghost
my—cough, cough—own party. But it’s really Dad’s party. His why-doesn’t-everyone-congratulate-
me-for-having-a-daughter-land-a-prestigious-semester-abroad-program party. All his friends and
business associates will be here to kiss his ring.
Why else would they come? Because they care that I’m one of ten college students in the country
accepted into this French program? Or maybe how studying in Paris for a few months will help with
my dual degrees?
They care as much as they cared when Dad threw a party for his little valedictorian when I
graduated from Carlisle Academy three years ago.
In my walk-in closet, I flick through the options and pick a little black dress. I slip it on, then
peruse the shoes, running my fingers over a few shelves. I hold up a pair of red-bottomed black heels.
“The ones Dad bought for me last month after he bought us orchestra seats for the opening of
Adventures of the Last Single Guy in New York, and then finally turned up at intermission. But hey, he
was, ahem, late from a meeting?” I grab a pair of silvery crisscross high-heeled sandals. “Or the
ones Joan bought as an aspirational gift after I broke my ankle?”
Layla rolls her sky-blue eyes with a particular kind of carelessness, the kind reserved for parental
BS. Then, she points a French-manicured nail authoritatively at the silvery pair. Layla makes fast
decisions. “Those will make your legs look extra hot. Not that that’s hard.”
I bob a shoulder, glowing a little from the compliment. “Thanks, friend,” I say, then I perch on the
edge of the bed and slide into the shoes, methodically crossing the straps till they climb high enough
to hug my calves. I rise, then jut out a hip, showing off the outfit.
 She hums low in her throat. “Those should be illegal,” she says with a whistle. “They go perfectly
with the LBD.”
Fine, fine.
Perhaps, I don’t entirely hate the idea of the party.
Bridger will be there. And maybe, dressed like this, I’ll look closer to twenty-one.
It’s less than a year away.
It’s a magic age.
Then, I’ll no longer be in college.
I’ll be his contemporary.
A frisson of possibility unfurls in my chest. I hide a grin from my friend. I haven’t breathed a
word about this storm of feelings to anyone. And I’ve never kept secrets from her. But this secret feels
like mine. Like a private letter, locked in a box, hidden away.

Layla and I circulate dutifully downstairs, making small talk, a skill we’ve both been schooled in for
years. Her since birth, me since my father became a big deal.
How is Jasmin doing in Tokyo?
Is Vikas enjoying his work in Washington?
Did you see the new sculpture at the Keller Gallery?
All the while, I graciously accept congratulations from all my father’s friends and associates.
Thank you. I’m so fortunate to be going there.
Yes, it’s going to be a wonderful challenge.
I can’t wait to settle into my flat in the Sixth.
And blah, blah, blah. Layla makes a few laps with me, snagging a champagne flute from a cute
server in black tie, tossing the guy a wink.
He smiles back, showing straight white teeth. Layla is such a sucker for great teeth. She should
consider snagging the city’s top orthodontist’s client list sometime.
Once he’s weaving through a pack of suits, my friend waggles a glass my way. “Want one?”
“No,” I say, but it’s too late. She grabs a second one from another passing waitperson and thrusts
it into my hand.
“Layla,” I say, but I take it anyway. It’s easier.
She nods to the packed home. Easily one hundred people mingle in the living room, spill into the
dining room. “Who are all these people?”
I lean closer, dip my voice. “Miss Such and Such, the VP of Sucking Up. Mister Whoever, the
Director of Kissing Ass. And, finally, there’s the Manager of I Have An Idea to Pitch You,” I say,
surveying the scene—smart dresses and blow-outs on the women, slicked-back hair and tailored
shirts for the men.
“Ah, I was hoping to pitch an idea to him. The idea of me,” she says, then points surreptitiously to
a handsome guy easily fifteen years older than she is.
I shoot her a doubtful look. “Seriously?”
She just wiggles her brows. Then she looks around again. “Oh, the hot one’s here.”
I figure she’s spotted another thirty-something guy, but when I follow her gaze my breath catches.
It’s Bridger. He must have just arrived. He wears a royal blue shirt and charcoal slacks. He’s
leaning against the wall, not drinking either. Watching the scene unfold. Part of it but separate as he
studies the people while tugging on the cuffs of his shirt.
Warmth blooms in my chest, a frothy, delicious sensation. I feel floaty, a little dreamy as I watch
him. A young publicist beelines for him and his gaze shifts to on.
Then, Layla bumps my shoulder. “When were you going to tell me?”
Confused, I turn my face to her. “Tell you what?”
With an I caught you smile, she shakes her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe you didn’t say a
word sooner. How long have you been hot for your dad’s business partner?”
My stomach drops. And that secret didn’t last long. “Is it obvious?” I ask. “To everyone, I mean.”
Her smile is gleeful, a little wicked. “No. But to me it is because I know you. And damn, he’s
pretty.” She nudges me again. “Go shoot your shot.”
The idea is too much. Too tempting. Too dangerous. But I appreciate her efforts. “Thanks, but I
don’t think it’ll work out,” I say, since isn’t that the truth. He’s just not interested in me. Not to
mention the big hurdle—I could never be with my dad’s business partner.
Layla shrugs, then drops a kiss to my cheek. “I should vanish. Don’t miss me too much.” Then,
low, under her breath, she urges, “Shoot, Harlow, shoot.”
“Get out of here,” I say, rolling my eyes.
But her command has gotten a hold of me. When she’s gone, I spin around, hunting for him again,
but he’s chatting with a woman in a paisley blouse.
Bridger doesn’t have a drink in his hand, and an idea takes hold. An opening line, if you will.
As I head to a group of network execs to put in more time, my father strides over, intercepting me.
Joan is with him. She looks regal, her chestnut mane swept up in a chignon.
She smiles affectionately at me. “Let’s raise a glass in a toast to our star,” she says.
“Of course,” Dad seconds.
He doesn’t even have to clear his throat. He commands a room by his mere presence, playing the
part he’s mastered. A modern-day Gatsby, complete with the slicked-back hair and semi-permanent
grin. His eyes gleam with fatherly pride. “To my daughter. I’ve never been prouder,” he says to the
crowd, then he wraps an arm around me. “Paris will be lucky to have you this fall.”
I’m his prize, all right. I smile, the bright, shiny kind that charms his friends. Something else I
learned from an early age. Be nice to Daddy’s associates and you can do what you want.
“Thank you,” I say to the crowd that’s smiling at me but sucking up to my father.
Except Bridger. He doesn’t need to suck up to my dad. He’s his equal. Equal shares in the
company. Equal say. His dark eyes meet mine as the partygoers lift their glasses and give a collective
Cheers.
“Thank you so much,” I say.
When the guests return to their networking, my father weaving back into the sea of black and white
and gray, the paisley lady says goodbye to Bridger. Buoyed by Layla’s shot of confidence, I’m
determined to snag a few minutes of his time before someone else corrals him. So he can see me as a
woman, not my father’s daughter.
Like that, I pass my drink to a waitperson and go to him.
 4

LUCKY NEW YORK

Harlow

When I reach Bridger, I flash him a grin. “Want a refill?” I ask, eyeing his empty hands, taking a
gamble with my offer.
“No thanks,” he says, then his gaze travels to my legs, a smile shifting his lips. “You’re walking
without help again.”
A zing rushes down my back. He noticed my legs.
I gesture to my high-heeled feet. “And I have a cool scar,” I say.
His eyebrow lifts. “You do?”
“On my ankle. I’m not sure if the bike cut me up or the cab. Either way, I got marked,” I tell him, a
little playfully, then I turn to the side, hoping he enjoys the profile view as I bend, pointing toward the
vicinity of the inch-long jagged scar, still pink. “Right there.”
As he looks down, he swallows. Roughly, maybe. Or is that my imagination? “Yeah, that’s some
scar,” he says, giving nothing away.
“Guess we’re both cool now,” I say, then tilt my head, weighing the next thing on my mind. “By
the way, I didn’t think you’d accept my drink offer.”
He takes a beat. “But you made it anyway?”
“I wanted to see if I was right.”
His brow knits in curiosity. I’ve set the trap. He’s taking my bait. “I’ll bite. Right about what?”
The next words come out cool, casual. Like I’m just this observant about everything. “You don’t
drink,” I say.
There’s a glint in his eyes. “You noticed?” He sounds mildly surprised, but I can’t quite tell if he’s
making conversation to pass the time or because he enjoys talking to me.
But now’s my chance. I meet his blue-eyed gaze straight on. “I notice things,” I say, nervous and
thrilled over the admission.
He’s quiet for a few seconds. Then he says, in that measured, even tone, “Yeah. You do.”
It’s an observation. Maybe a curiosity. Almost impossible to read.
“I do,” I say.
He scratches his jaw, then says, “So NYU, and now a semester in Paris.” Like he needs the
conversational shift. “You picked well.”
“Don’t worry,” I say, a grin teasing at my lips. “I’ll be back in December. You can’t take the girl
out of New York for long.”
“Lucky New York,” he says, and I want to cup those words in my palms for the rest of the night.
The rest of the year.
I smile, buoyed by his response as I work out a reply to keep this going when Dad shoulders his
way past me.
The buzz-killer nods at the man I’m in lust with.
“Bridger, I must steal you away. Lionel from the UK office is here,” Dad says.
Yes, of course Lionel from the UK office would attend my celebration.
I grit my teeth in annoyance but just smile like the good daughter. Even though Dad doesn’t even
say a word to me. He just whisks Bridger away and that’s the end of that.

Later, I’m still feeling bold from his Lucky New York, like I’ve been shot up with a feel-good drug.
Something that makes me feel bigger than the world. I slide into bed, under the covers, touching the
wooden box of letters I keep on my nightstand. It’s safe. Then, I place the phone on my pillow, just
inches from me. I run my finger along the necklace I wear every day, feeling the shape of the I that
hangs from it.
I for the French word intrépidité.
Then, as if champagne is bubbling through me—but it’s not, not one bit—I tap open my text
messages. At last, I have a reason to use that number.
I’m brave. I’m intrepid.

Harlow: I notice other things too. Like how good you looked in your shirt.

Then I hit send, a little high, a lot on top of the world.

As I get ready for bed, I check for a reply.
Nothing.
After I slip into a pair of sleep shorts, I look once more.
Silence.
I close my eyes, but sleep is so far away it might as well be in Indonesia.
In the morning, I wake to a blinking icon. I catch my breath.

Bridger: Thanks. Bespoke makes great shirts.

Hmm. Well, it’s not what I wanted but it’s something. It’s more than a thanks. Maybe it’s even an
opening.
Once I’m up and out of bed, I find my dad in the kitchen, brewing a cup of tea and nuzzling Joan’s
neck.
“Morning, love,” he says to me when he pulls away from his fiancée.
“Hello, Harlow,” Joan says with a slightly embarrassed grin, like they were caught doing more
than neck kissing.
I’ve seen so much worse, honey.
“Hi Joan. Hi Dad,” I say breezily, then head for the fruit basket to grab a peach. When I finish it, I
say, “I’m going for a bike ride.”
It’s my first time in the saddle since I broke my ankle, and my scar makes me feel intrepid as I
ride.
 5

THIS COLOR WOULD LOOK GOOD ON YOU

Harlow

A week later, I’m shopping in the Village with Layla and Ethan at a trendy boutique. He needs a sexy
shirt for our last weekend in the Hamptons. Layla needs a barely there top. I need nothing—I’m not
trying to impress anyone at our final party before we fan out to universities around the world next
week for our senior years.
When they head to the dressing room, I wander around the men’s clothing section, running my
fingers over the shirts.
Then, my gaze catches on the brand name on one tag.
Bespoke.
I glance around, furtive.
This would be risky. A little wild.
But the risk fuels me. I hold up the teal button-down shirt in front of me. It’s too big, of course. It’s
a men’s large.
Grabbing my phone, I angle the camera just so.
I don’t show my face. Instead, I snap a pic of the shirt fabric laying against me.
That’s all. Before I can think better of it, I send it with the caption: This color would look good
on you.
I tuck the phone away, resisting its insistent pull for the next hour. But when I’m nibbling on a
chickpea dish at a sidewalk café Ethan picks for lunch, my phone buzzes.
Immediately, my chest zings.
It has to be him.
When I grab it in less than a second, Ethan smirks. “Hot new date?”
I scoff, but then I sizzle when I read Bridger’s note. Thanks for the fashion tip.
It’s just a chaste note. It’s just a thanks.
But it’s also a response.
I feel elated and defeated at the same time in equal measure. “Just a friend,” I say, then set the
phone facedown.
Layla arches a perfectly groomed brow. She’s not taking this one lying down. “Just a friend?”
“Just a friend,” I repeat, since I’m not sure that he’s anything more.
“Are you sure?” she asks, staring at me, like she can extract the truth with her eyes.
 “Is there a reason Harlow would be unsure?” Ethan asks curiously, jumping in.
“I’m positive,” I say firmly, then flip my hair off my shoulder. “So, what do we want to do first
when we hit East Hampton on our final weekend?”
Layla’s blue eyes say she knows what I’m doing but her mouth says, “The beach, of course.”
Ethan shakes his head. “No, the pool. Your pool is unfairly obscene,” he says, emphatically.
“But is something obscene truly unfair?” she counters, like they’re having a philosophical
argument.
Thoughtfully, Ethan taps his regal chin, the perfect match to his classical nose. He’s a looker all
right, all blue-blood, Upper East Side, matinee-idol pretty. He’s attracted all the guys and gals in
college.
As they debate the semantics of obscenity, I hide a smile rising inside me.
Maybe this text is just the start of something.

On Sunday night, we cruise home from the Hamptons in Layla’s sweet sports car, exhausted from the
sun, the water, and our last time together for a while.
“I’ll miss you all,” I say after she pulls up in front of my brownstone and gets out.
“I’ll miss you more,” she chimes in, throwing her arms around me.
“I’ll miss you the most,” Ethan says, not to be outdone.
“Group hug,” I declare, and we smoosh each other until tears are rolling, since the end of summer
is always sweet and bittersweet.
Finally, I tear myself away from my friends and say goodbye.
Later that week, I’m in my room packing my suitcase for my semester abroad—clothing, a few
books, a couple keepsakes. My father ordered his limo driver to take me to the airport tomorrow.
Dad’s so extra, but I can’t complain.
I FaceTime Hunter, even though it’s late in London. “You better come see me,” he says. Hunter has
an English mom and mostly grew up in London. But his accent is less posh than Dad’s.
“Same to you,” I say. “You’ll only be a Chunnel train ride away.”
We chat some more then I say goodbye, and after I zip my last bag, I flop back on my bed,
checking the time on my phone. Eleven.
My phone blinks with a text from my dad. He’s downstairs, but he always texts me goodnight.
I’m off to bed. Sleep well. Joan will be back in the morning. Xoxo
I smile faintly, a vague sense of appreciation for his note floating past me as I drift into sleep.
But in the middle of the night, I’m dreaming of takeout cartons of Thai, and Vietnamese, and tacos.
My stomach growls, and I wake with a hungry start.
I blink my eyes open.
I wish my mother were here to send me off. Even though I remember her less and less, I still wish
she were here, especially since Paris was our dream. She loved the city she lived in when she
attended college. We’d visit as often as we could, traipsing around museums, lingering in chocolate
shops, playing in the Tuileries Garden. Even after so many years without her, there are moments when
the missing coils inside me. But then it unwinds seconds later. It’s weird, grief. Weird the way it
lingers sometimes, like a trailing scent of faint perfume long after the wearer has left the room.
Sometimes you notice the scent. Mostly you don’t.
 My stomach growls again. I focus on the practical matters rather than faded memories. I didn’t eat
dinner, so I go downstairs.
The brownstone is eerie and still, as it should be after hours. I pad quietly to the kitchen. In the
fridge, I snag hummus and carrots. As I dip a carrot, I hear footsteps and turn my head.
Seriously?
I learn two things in the next few seconds.
My father has a new lover.
And she sleeps topless. She wears only boy shorts. Her magnificent tits fly free as she walks past
the dining room table, toward the kitchen before she stops short, startled.
“Oh my god,” she says, her hands shooting up, covering her breasts.
I grit my teeth, swallowing down my disgust. I show nothing. I am the portrait of unflinching as I
lean against the kitchen counter. Impervious.
“Hungry?” I ask as I crunch into the carrot.
Even in the dark, I can see her face turn red. “I’m so sorry.”
But she’s not moving. Perhaps her bare feet are stuck to the floor of the entryway.
“I had no idea you were going to be in the kitchen,” she says, stumbling on words.
I smile. All plastic. “That’s clear.”
She spins around, rushes off.
I finish the carrot in the silence, then return to the upstairs bedroom. I can’t wait till I don’t live
here anymore. If I could never set foot in this house again, it wouldn’t be soon enough.
When groans slink up the stairs and curl down the hallway, I grab my headphones, punch up the
soundtrack for Ask Me Next Year, a little-known Broadway musical, and let it help me blot out the
sounds of my father’s sex den below.
The next morning when I go downstairs, still humming the bittersweet tunes, I brace myself for a
run-in with the new lady. But the amply endowed woman is nowhere to be seen. Instead, my father is
brewing tea and listening to NPR’s morning report, dressed for the day in a polo shirt and beige
slacks.
He turns my way and smiles. “Ready for the big day?”
“Yup,” I bite out.
“What’s wrong, poppet?”
I’ve had enough. I’ve swallowed years of lies, and I’m done. “I’m not here that often,” I tell him.
“Just summers and breaks. So, do you think you could ask your sleepover guests to, I dunno, wear
clothes when they wander around the house at night?”
A slow grin spreads across his face, and he rolls his green eyes—the same shade as mine.
“Poppet, it’s nothing. You have all the same parts.”
That’s his argument? “So if you were queer, and had a half-naked man as a guest this would be
not okay. But because you’re straight, it’s okay?”
He furrows his brow, trying to work out my logic. “Is this about orientation or identity?”
I huff. There’s no point. He doesn’t get it. I grab a bagel and bite into it, ripping off a hunk.
As I chew, the front door creaks open and Joan sails in, just arrived from Boston. “I couldn’t miss
sending you off to Paris for the semester, sweetheart,” she calls out, kind and oblivious.
My throat squeezes. My father fucked someone else while you were out of town. Her tits are
perkier than yours. Instead, I say, “Thank you for coming.”
I know better than to tell her the truth.
When I was thirteen, and my father was married to Roselyn, wife number three, I let slip at the
dinner table that his friend Graceanne had spent the night a few weeks before. I’d thought she was
simply sleeping over in the guest room.
The next day, Roselyn checked into a spa. My father sat me down in the living room and told me I
needn’t have concerned myself about Graceanne. After all, he and Roselyn had an arrangement. An
understanding. “Darling, I know you’re trying to be helpful, but it’s better you don’t get involved.
Roselyn doesn’t need to know about my guests. It’ll only upset the delicate balance of an adult
relationship.”
But that left me more confused. “Okay, but you said that woman was your friend. Graceanne?”
He’d patted my knee. “Exactly. Just a friend. So we don’t need to tell Roselyn these things again.
They can send her over the, well, the edge.” A fatherly hug. An unspoken warning. “Best to just keep
things that happen in the house…in the house.”
Let sleeping dogs lie.
Roselyn moved back in a month later. “She’s so much better now,” my dad had declared. Like her
stint wherever she’d been had erased the memory not only of his cheating but of my big mouth.
They stayed together for another year, then my father left her. I knew what was coming when he
switched from a rainforest scent to a spicy one. He always picks out a new cologne when he’s ready
for a new woman.
Perhaps Roselyn had upset his delicate balance, because he soon moved on to Mariana, marrying
her for a few years, then changing his cologne again when he met Joan.
I’d learned my lesson. It wasn’t my place to breathe a word. There would be no more accidental
mentions of friends.
So I keep quiet now. Even when my dad wraps Joan into a warm embrace, cooing, “Love you,
darling,” I just keep smiling. I could nab a statuette in Hollywood with my cheery smile.
When we slide into the back of the town car, my father takes her hand, and bile rises in my throat.
I stare out the window, fingering my necklace as the limo swings south on Fifth Avenue, en route to
the airport.
I count down the seconds till I’m out of the country and far, far away from him.
Though, admittedly, I’ll miss seeing the one person I liked bumping into around my father.
The man whose shirts I adore.
But missing him is ridiculous. This is just a foolish little crush. Bridger’s shirts don’t matter, our
bonding over Broadway doesn’t matter, and my wicked feelings don’t matter.
I vow to get over him while I’m in Paris.

Mostly, I do just that in France. It helps that my father mentions offhand in an email that Bridger’s
started seeing someone. Someone named Emma he met online.
I ignore the burn in my chest. I ignore it for all of September.
Then, I no longer have to ignore the feeling because it fades on its own. Maybe from lack of
oxygen? Not seeing a man will do that to you, I suppose. I barely think of him from thousands of miles
away.
Fine, André does help distract me. The French art student I meet mostly takes my mind off Bridger
as we wander through museums together and visit dance clubs with our friends.
Except, maybe we’re wired to want what we don’t have since sometimes when I kiss André in my
flat in the Sixth, I think of the man in the purple shirt. Sometimes when André touches me, I imagine
someone else’s hands on my skin.
Maybe that’s why this brief Paris romance doesn’t last long enough for André to be my first. That,
and art studies keep calling to me, leaving little time for my French lover…or Bridger.
There is too much beauty here in Paris to linger on one faraway man.

When I return to New York in December, I nearly turn down my father’s email invitation to attend a
Sweet Nothings gala.
I want to RSVP instantly with a no.
And that feels fantastic. Freeing even.
Until I read on, seeing the part where Bridger’s single again.
Oh.
Well.
Maybe I should go to the party. Just to confirm this wicked little crush is out of my system after
all.
I change my reply to a yes.
But when I go, Bridger’s wearing the teal shirt.

Harlow and Bridger’s love story begins in THE RSVP.

THE RSVP
 1

MAYBE NOW

Harlow

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss Paris, but it is good to be back in New York.
The poets and writers will have you believe that nothing aches like longing for a lover. But I’m
here to say, the hole in my heart was for these two humans—Layla and Ethan.
I craved friend time so much while I was in Europe. And I want to gobble up every second with
them now that I’m home again.
We’re in the spacious kitchen of Layla’s family’s Upper West Side four-story brownstone—her
mom is off in Greece for most of December—and I’m holding a pretty blue box with a silver ribbon
around the center. Layla turned twenty-one while I was in Paris for the fall semester of my senior year
of college. Since I committed the mortal sin of missing my best friend’s birthday, I’m making it up to
her as best I can.
“It’s from a store in the 6th that’s on every travel influencer’s under-the-radar list, so naturally,
everyone knows about it, and it better be the best damn chocolate ever,” I say as I thrust the box at my
friend. I unearthed the jewel among chocolate shops on the corner of Rue de la Huchette, near where I
lived for the last three months. “It called out to me. It said please bring me home to Layla.”
Layla hugs the box to her chest. “Good thing you listened to it.”
Ethan clears his throat, side-barring to Layla. “Better make sure she snagged the good stuff before
you say that,” he teases.
“Please. I always get the good stuff,” I say. Then, since I missed Ethan turning twenty-one too, I
snag a gift bag for him from the counter.
With grabby hands, he digs into the tissue paper, extracts a skinny silver tie, then cracks up. “It’s
what every aspiring rocker wants.”
“See? I always take care of my loves,” I say as he loops the tie around his neck and knots it
loosely.
“And I got this for us to celebrate,” Layla says, then brandishes a bottle of champagne from the
kitchen counter. In a swirl of black cashmere and blonde hair, Layla yanks open a drawer and grabs a
wine opener. Ethan tugs on a cupboard door and snags some glasses. It’s a familiar choreography, the
way we know each other’s homes. We’ve known them since we met in first grade way back when.
Layla hands the opener to Ethan, who pops the cork with panache. She pours two glasses, then
arches a brow my way over the third. But I decline, opting for a boring LaCroix I grab from her Sub-
Zero instead.
I’ll be twenty-one soon enough but legality’s not the point.
I pour the bubbly water, then the three of us toast. “To a great winter break,” Layla says, the liquid
glistening under the light of the chandelier that illuminates the kitchen island.
“To countless holiday parties with lots of gorgeous people,” Ethan puts in.
“Hear hear,” Layla says.
I lift mine higher. “And I’ll drink to saying no to all the parties my father invites me to. It’s the
start of a new era.”
We all toast to that.

Even though I’m home, I don’t go home. The last time I ran into one of my father’s lovers in the
middle of the night, I learned it’s better to have my own place.
So after I catch up with my friends, I head downtown to Chelsea to the apartment I rented and will
share with two English majors for my final semester.
This way, it’ll be easier for Dad to conduct his affairs.
I mean, cheating on his fiancée has to be simpler when he doesn’t need to either enlist me to help
cover it up or kick me out of the house when his lady of the month arrives.
Still, I’m intrigued by his email that arrives as I’m unlocking the door.
Do I want to attend The Annual Silver and Gold Sweet Nothings Affair?
It’s the holiday party for his world-famous television show that’s become the toast of the globe.
The show my father built on the backs of the bestselling novels he inherited from my mother when she
died.
No, thanks. I won’t be going. I don’t need to lean in to his ego.
But, he adds, the fete will be held at The Museum of Modern Art. In the sculpture gardens.
I’m tempted. I’m definitely tempted. I never could resist a museum. Art is such an elixir.
As I walk down the hallway to my apartment, I read on.
There will be people there that you should meet, Dad adds.
Fair point. I should meet people in the art business. That’s true. I need to think about what I’ll do
in six months when I graduate.
Then, at the bottom of his email, he finishes with Bridger will be there. You can cheer him up
since his girlfriend broke up with him.
I nearly drop my keys in my hurry to type “yes.”
Shutting the door, I set a hand on my chest, trying to calm my speeding heart. There’s so much in
this email. So much possibility.
My father’s business partner is single.
His handsome, intriguing, doesn’t-fit-into-the-crowd, only-ten-years-older-than-I-am business
partner.
My once-upon-a-time, wicked little crush.
The man who carried me to an ambulance when a cab hit my bicycle last summer. The man who
checked in on me the next day at my home. The man whose shirts I complimented after my send-off-
to-Paris party.
 The incredibly off-limits, sexy-as-sin, inscrutable man who runs a multimillion-dollar company
along with my father.
Bridger had a girlfriend while I was in Paris.
Now he’s single.
And he’ll be at the Sweet Nothings party.
I’d thought I was over my one-way crush. Surely, I am. I can’t harbor feelings for this long just
because he’s handsome. Or because I pictured him once or twice when I was with someone else.
Then again, why the hell is my heart jittery? My pulse spiking? And what is this fizzy feeling
racing through my body?
Maybe I’m not over him. Maybe the crush is zooming back to me on its return trip.
I’m a few months older.
A lot wiser.
And I’m a woman who wants to know what’s become of a once great and powerful crush.
So much for saying no to my father’s invites.
I RSVP instantly.

In the morning, as I head to the campus for a meeting with my faculty advisor, I pass a shop in the
West Village and do a double take.
The store is the one I went to a few months ago with Layla and Ethan before I left for Paris. As
they shopped, I stole away to the men’s section, found a shirt that reminded me of Bridger, and sent
him a photo.
My breath catches again just thinking of that.
I open my phone, click on my texts, and return to that last thread with him. There’s the shot of me
holding up a teal button-down, the caption reading: This color would look good on you.
He replied with a simple: Thanks for the fashion tip.
That was all he said. But still, I run a finger over the text, and I hit the like button for the first time
on his reply.

The next evening, I get dressed in my apartment in Chelsea, feeling a little wound up as I zip up a
simple dark red dress. Soon, I’ll know if time has doused my desires, or if this bouncy feeling is
infatuation all over again.
I touch up my mascara and dust on some blush, I adjust the gold necklace I always wear, with its
letter-shaped pendant—I for the French word, intrépidité.
A gift from my mother.
My contribution to the gold theme tonight.
I step into a pair of short boots and grab a coat, then I leave, the elevator whisking me downstairs,
where I head out into the New York night. It occurs to me that I’m going to a party Bridger will attend,
and for the first time, I’m leaving from someplace other than the home I once shared with my father.
That thought wraps around me like sweet smoke wafting through the air, a little tantalizing.
I catch a Lyft uptown, slicking on lip gloss when I reach Fifty-Third.
Well, he does need cheering up, and perhaps I’m finally the woman to do it.
 2

SHIRT MEMORIES

Bridger

You’re only as good as your last hit.

Every singer knows this. Every actor, every writer—hell, everyone in the entertainment business
should live and die by this mantra.
I’ve been hunting for a new hit for years.
It’s December and we just wrapped another season of Sweet Nothings, so I spend the afternoon in
my office overlooking Central Park, flipping through pages and more pages. Some of those pages are
a script for a drama that has “streaming hit” written all over it. Anti-Heroes Unleashed. It’s
unputdownable. I lob in a call to the writer’s agent and discuss terms.
I’d call that a very good nine-to-five, thank you very much.
But in this business, one good day does not make your career. I glance at the clock on the wall. I
need to take off soon for an event. I’m honestly not sure I want to go to it, but that’s most events.
There’s a chance, though, that David Fontaine could be there. If I could just grab a word with the
guy…
His new show The World Enough And Time is blowing critics’ minds. The darkly comic TV
show about an ex-CIA agent gone undercover premieres this Thursday night.
I want our company to land his next show. Badly.
Snagging Fontaine would be a challenge—bigger than any I’ve encountered before, given his
impressive resume, as well as his notorious pickiness. But I like to combat pickiness with patience.
Fontaine doesn’t stick with one production company for long—maybe because he hasn’t found the
right one.
Or maybe because the right one hasn’t found him.
Yet.
My new intern, Jonathan, raps on my office door. Clears his throat. “Hi Mr. James.”
“Come in. And, like I said, you can call me Bridger.”
Jonathan strides over to my long wooden desk, waggles his iPad. “Thank you, Mr. James. I read
Savage Love at lunch. I prepped my coverage for you.”
“And?” I ask, leaning back in the chair, hoping he can get to the point soon. Yay or nay—that is
all.
Jonathan swallows nervously. He does everything nervously. He’ll never fucking last like that.
But he’s a friend of one of the producers at Sweet Nothings, and blah, blah, blah.
“I think the rising action is great,” he says, fidgeting with the cuff of his shirt.
“The rising action?” I counter.
“The beginning…of the story,” he explains, awkwardly.
“I’m familiar with what rising action is.”
“And it’s good,” he says, then goes on for a full minute about what happens in Savage Love, and I
want to interrupt, to tell him what an elevator pitch is, because the clock ticks ominously louder in my
head, and I need to go home, shower, change, go for a walk, then get over to MoMA. Promised Ian I’d
show up, and I always make good on my promises, no matter how distasteful I find events. “But I
think it would be better if the love story started sooner,” Jonathan says, finally finishing.
That snags my interest—the mention of the love story. I want a love story that grabs me by the
throat.
“Remember this—the love story should always start sooner than you think,” I say, then I stand and
check my reflection in the window overlooking Central Park, assessing what I’m wearing. I’ll change
for the party when I’m home in a little bit. “You know what I want to find, though?”
“What, sir?” Jonathan asks.
“The next Sweet Nothings,” I say, feeling the hunger for a hit deep in my gut. I won’t stop hunting
till I find it. “But we can’t wait for a love story to start,” I say, pausing to look at the wall clock, the
ticking a reminder I need to go. “It needs to start right away.”
Jonathan knits his brow. “Um, I’ll keep looking, sir. I have lots of scripts to read this weekend,”
he says.
“Great,” I say. Maybe he’ll learn something here at my production company, Lucky 21. Maybe he
won’t.
But right now, I need to do the next thing on my list. Look sharp for tonight. I wish I enjoyed
schmoozing. Dressing well covers how much I dislike it.
Once he leaves, I check the time again on my watch. It’s six-thirty. My chest tightens, and it’s
borderline painful. I’m due at MoMA in an hour and a half. On my walk in Central Park, I can remind
myself of why I show up at parties. Why I need to be present.
For the company. For the show. To do my job networking after hours.
I take off for my apartment in Gramercy Park, listening to a long-forgotten musical on the way, to
numbers hardly anyone remembers or knows. Then, once I’m home, I strip out of my work clothes.
Under the scalding-hot stream of the shower, I picture the party tonight. The people who’ll be
there. The deals I need to massage. The things I’ll say.
When I’m out of the shower and dried off, I head to my closet, review the rows of shirts, arranged
by color. Blues, purples, pinks, greens, oranges.
I consider each one, as I put on black slacks, slip into wingtips. Then, I pick a new shirt. One I
bought last week.
I look at my reflection on the closet door.
Huh. It does look good—this teal button-down.
 3

MY DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

Harlow

On a cool December night, I enter the museum, check my coat, and follow the sign for The Annual
Silver and Gold Sweet Nothings Affair in the sculpture gardens. You’d be hard-pressed to tell it’s
December since the outdoor heaters are working overtime to warm the air.
In seconds, my father spots me, heading straight for me by the fountain. He wraps his arm around
me, dropping a kiss to my cheek.
“Hello, poppet, so good to see you,” he says, then after we chat briefly about the traffic, the
weather, how I look—good, good, good—he says, “Excellent. Now, there are people I want you to
meet.”
In no time, we chat briefly with Dominic Rivera, one of the actors on the show who loves art, then
my father’s introducing me to curators, educators, and auction house executives.
It would be overwhelming if I didn’t grow up being introduced.
A woman with black braids in a stylish top knot and cat-eye glasses is a curator of expressionist
art here. Her name is Amelie, and she meets my gaze with the particular intensity of someone about to
cross-examine someone. Me.
“You want to work in the museum field?” she asks in a French accent.
“I’m considering it,” I say, even though that’s not entirely true. But she doesn’t need to know I’m
undecided. I don’t know her.
She quizzes me about whether I consider myself an acolyte of the Marxist school of art history, the
post-colonial one, or something else entirely.
“It’s hard to imagine that social and economic circumstances don’t influence the creation of art,” I
say, a response that would brand me a Marxist.
Except my dirty little secret is I study art because, gasp, I like art.
The shape of it, the look of it, the way beauty makes me feel.
But I’m supposed to like the why behind it. So I drop in terms like Feminist Marxism to show I
paid attention in my theory classes. My grasp of the lingo seems to light up Amelie.
“Do you speak French?” she asks me in that language.
“I do. I studied there this past semester,” I say, answering in French.
“Keep in touch then, Harlow,” she says, then gives me her email, telling me to reach out if I need
anything.
 “I will,” I say, smiling privately.
When Amelie catches the eye of someone she needs to chat with, I figure I’ll make a lap or ten to
find Bridger. I need to work on my theory of crushes now and their rate of decay.
Instead, when I spin around to look for him, I nearly bump into a silver fox. His arm is wrapped
around a woman’s waist, and he’s laughing into her silky black hair.
“Oh, excuse me,” I say quietly.
“No worries,” the woman says with a laugh, then adds, “For the record, sometimes a sculpture is
just a sculpture.”
“Sometimes they are,” I say, amiably. I don’t want to make any little asides about Amelie or art
history. That would be rude. I extend a hand. “Harlow Granger.”
“Ah, Ian’s daughter,” she says, knowingly.
That’s me. I used to be Felicity Dumont’s daughter, but no one thinks of my mother anymore, of the
worlds she built, the romance she captured in her tales of Sweet Nothings. “Yes, I’m that Granger,” I
say as brightly as I can, briefly touching the I on my necklace.
“I’m Allison Tanaka-Fontaine,” she says, and instantly I recognize her last name—her husband’s a
sought-after TV writer. “I do some consulting for the museum. They wanted me here tonight,” she
says, apologetically, like she has to explain her presence here. She gestures to the man with her like
she’s about to introduce him, but he’s peering toward the door. “For what it’s worth, I sometimes just
like to look at art too.”
I smile, feeling a strange kinship with her. “I’m the same,” I say. “I like to look and to feel.”
Her eyes twinkle. “Yes. I get that.”
Then, they weave out of the party like spies, evading capture.
A few seconds later, Bridger walks into the gardens, adjusting the cuffs on his shirt.
He always does that at parties. Like his buttons could come undone.
Oh.
Oh my god.
That shirt. He’s wearing teal. He’s wearing the color I told him to buy. My breath catches, surely
from the surprise of the shirt.
Not from anything else.
But my pulse spikes too. My mouth goes dry. I should have practiced what to say to him, but then
Marxism happened, and now he’s happening.
Chin up, heels on, I head to him, my stomach annoyingly cartwheeling with every click of my
shoes on the concrete. Maybe it was foolish to think I could archive those feelings while I was a
continent away. I kind of wish I could file them in a cabinet of the past. Because what the hell am I
supposed to do with them now? But I don’t turn around. I don’t walk away. I go to him, needing the
proximity to know for certain that this is happening all over again.
When I close in on him near the Picasso sculpture, he’s scanning the place like a sniper, his gaze
acquiring targets. There’s an intensity to his blue eyes that’s disarming. “Hi,” I say to his side, and it
comes out too breathy. Nearly inaudible.
“Hi Bridger,” I say, trying again.
He startles, then shifts, his eyes landing on me. “Oh.” There’s a tinge of surprise in his tone. His
gaze travels quickly, too quickly, along my body. “It’s been a while,” he says, recovering, arranging
his voice to that even, professional tone I’ve known for five years.
“Yeah, it has been,” I say, taking a breath to steady myself when I catch a whiff of his scent. Soap,
something expensive, something organic, I bet. Something that touched his body an hour ago.
 Something delicious.
The scent floats through my nose, awakening…everything.
So much for time. So much for distance. So much for trying.
I’m not over him. Not at all.
“A long while,” he adds.
Does he sound wistful, or do I just want him to sound wistful? “How are you?” I ask.
“How are you?” he counters, like he’s avoiding the question. Or maybe like he’s legit interested
in how I am. A girl can hope.
“I’m good. I graduate in May. Six more months,” I say, since what’s more important than that? I’m
almost out of here. Can I write it in the sky any clearer?
Bridger nods like he knew this already. “Ian did mention that,” he says.
I wince, wishing he hadn’t interjected my dad into the conversation. But I’ll just eject back out.
“Paris was amazing. You’ve been, I presume?”
He nods. “I have. What made it amazing for you?”
Oh, that’s nice. A question to keep the conversation going. “It was everything I’d hoped it would
be,” I say. “I had my own flat by the river. I sat in cafés drinking espresso and being broody as I read
dark poetry.”
That earns me a wry smile.
“And I lived at the museums and galleries.”
“Sounds incredible. Those are terrific opportunities, dark poetry aside,” Bridger says, like a man
talking to someone who’s almost his contemporary.
At least, I hope so. Or maybe I’m just reading things I want to hear into his words. Only, I don’t
want to talk about me any longer. My gaze drifts to the cuffs of his shirt. “I see you have silver
cufflinks,” I say. “Very subtle nod to the theme.”
His eyes dart to my necklace then back to my face. “And gold for you.”
A ribbon of warmth unfurls in me. He noticed. It’s time to cut to the chase. “I heard you’re not
seeing Emma anymore,” I say.
Bridger breathes out hard, a sigh, but it’s nearly emotionless. “You heard right,” he says, and he
doesn’t sound like a man who needs cheering up whatsoever. He sounds just fine.
“You seem content,” I observe.
Bridger shrugs, one strong shoulder rising up. “We didn’t have that much in common it turns out,”
he says, like it’s just one of those things, no big deal.
“That’s important, isn’t it?” I ask, and I don’t feel like the girl who crashed into a cab six months
ago. Or the one at the summer send-off party.
I feel like I was forged from Paris. Then I rose up from Chelsea. Once upon a time I was raised
on Fifth Avenue, but I’m not the girl living in my father’s house any longer.
“Common interests? Yes. They are,” he says, emphatic, then glances around the open space, a
little hamlet in the midst of the city. We’re surrounded by stone and marble, by money and erudition.
“So this must be good for you, art history and all?” He asks the question like he doesn’t want to return
to the party, like he’d rather talk to me.
Finally. I can read him.
I lean in closer, conspiratorially, stealing another hint of his cedar scent. “Can I confess
something?”
He hums, a note of intrigue. “Sure,” he says.
I tip my forehead toward the tree near us. We move around it, past its branches, farther away from
the hubbub of people. He doesn’t seem to mind getting some distance from the crowd. Perhaps this is
a sign that the crush could be two-way.
No, that’s too wild a thought.
But wouldn’t that be something?
“What’s your confession?” he asks, tugging on his cuffs again. Is that a nervous habit, maybe? Or
perhaps an orderly one?
“I don’t know what I want to do with my degree,” I admit.
And wow. Did a weight lift from my shoulders? I think it did. I let out a surprised breath. “I…”
“First time you said that out loud?”
“Yes,” I say, enthused, excited even to speak the words I was holding inside with the museum
curator.
Everything feels lighter. “I don’t know if I want to work at a museum, or visit a museum, or run an
art gallery, or just wander into art galleries. I don’t know at all,” I say, then I glance away, worrying
at the corner of my lips. “And I’ve been studying. I should know, shouldn’t I?”
He shrugs casually. Gives an easy smile to match. “But should you?” It’s like point, counterpoint.
His question is open-ended. He’s asking. Really asking. So I really answer. “I feel that way a lot.
I think I have some guilt over not knowing. Should I, Bridger?”
His dark eyes gleam, like he wants to share something. Wants to reveal. “Want to hear a secret?”
That word on his tongue sends a charge through me.
I want to be his secret. “Tell me,” I say, desperate for more.
“I didn’t study business, or Econ, or even English lit like most people in my field,” he says, and I
feel like he’s offering conversational appetizers on a platter.
I want to eat them all. “What did you study?”
“Psychology,” he says. “And I’m not a therapist. I’m just…a producer.”
“Just a producer. More like an entertainment industry force of nature,” I tease.
A sly smile. He won’t admit it in words, but that tilt of his lips says I’m right with my assessment.
“But see, I’m not a psychologist. Sometimes you go into your field. Sometimes you don’t. The key is
learning to think. That’s what I learned in college. And how to strategize. Know what I mean?”
“I think I know what you mean. Strategy applies to any field. Thinking does too, of course,” I add.
“Exactly,” he says, with a satisfied smile.
“Then I hope I’m learning both,” I say.
Maybe I can put them to use with him?
I hope, as we talk, that I’m being strategic with this crush that didn’t end, that phoenixed out of the
ashes tonight.
Bridger’s eyes drift to the crowd. Something flashes in them. Reluctance? Annoyance? But mostly
it looks like resignation. “I should talk to Jess Dudeck,” he says, definitely resigned. “I’m supposed to
work on a deal for Romania. There’s a TV network there wanting to format the show,” he explains.
“That’s when—” He shakes his head, a little embarrassed. “You don’t want to know what formatting
is.”
“Actually, I know what formatting is. When they take the concept and adapt it for syndication in
foreign countries,” I say.
A smile. Like he should have known better. “Of course. You’ve always paid attention,” he says,
then his eyes drift down to his shirt, and since I’m pretty sure it’s best to leave anyone wanting more, I
find the will to go. But first, I lift a finger, run it briefly along the edge of his shirt collar. “Teal is your
color,” I say, then I walk away.
Another random document with
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These defences have evidently got out of their proper order, and
have probably been a good deal corrupted as well[254]. But their form
and general purport are mostly intelligible and show undoubted signs
of Egyptian origin. They were therefore probably not the work of the
earlier Ophites or Naassenes, but were most likely introduced when
the Ophite doctrines began to leave their primitive seat in Phrygia
and to spread westward into North Africa and the south-east of
Europe. The diagram itself seems to be fairly expressive of the more
ancient teaching and in particular the division of all things below the
Godhead into three parts. Thus we find in it the “middle space” or
heaven of Sophia, itself perhaps the Paradise whence the
protoplasts and Ophiomorphus were hurled, then the world of seven
planets, and finally this earth under the government of
Ophiomorphus’ seven angels. To judge from Origen’s remark that
“they say there is a sympathy (συμπάθεια) between the Star
Phaenon (i.e. Saturn) and the lion-like power (Michael)[255],” it is
probable that the Ophites, like the Babylonian astrologers, looked
upon the system of “correspondences,” as it was afterwards called,
as running through all nature in such a way that every world and
every power inhabiting it was a reflection of the one above it[256]. That
each world according to the Naassenes contained a “Church” or
assembly of souls[257] is stated in the text quoted above, the
“Captive” Church there mentioned being evidently composed of the
souls still held in the grip of matter, the “Called” of those who had
passed into the planetary worlds, and the “Chosen” of those who
were purified enough to be admitted into the middle space or
Paradise of Sophia[258]. That these last were thought to be eventually
united with the Deity appears in some later developments of the
Ophite faith, but the doctrine seems also to have been known to the
Naassenes, since the author quoted by Hippolytus speaks of “the
perfect gnostics” becoming “kingless” (that is, subject to no other
being) and as appointed to “share in the Pleroma[259].”
Of the amount of success which the speculations of the Ophites
enjoyed we know very little. Origen, as we have seen, speaks of
them as being in his day “an insignificant sect”; and we have no
proof that their numbers were ever very large[260]. Father Giraud
asserts on the faith of some of the smaller heresiologists and
Conciliar Acts that they spread over the whole of Asia Minor, through
Syria and Palestine into Egypt on the one hand, and, on the other, to
Mesopotamia, Armenia, and even to India, and this is probably more
or less correct[261]. But those who had actually read their writings, as
Irenaeus and Hippolytus evidently had done, seem to have looked
upon them more as the source of many later heresies than as
formidable by their own numbers. Whether the Sethians with whom
Irenaeus would identify them were really a subdivision of the Ophite
sect may be doubted, because in Hippolytus’ account of the Sethian
doctrines, the existence of Jesus is never mentioned or referred to,
and there is some reason for thinking them a non-Christian sect[262].
But the heresies of the Peratae and of Justinus, which Hippolytus
describes as not differing much from the Ophites, certainly resemble
that which has been summarized above too closely for the
resemblance to be accidental; while the same remark applies to
those of the Barbeliotae and Cainites described by Irenaeus, and to
the Gnostics, Archontics, and others of whom we read in Epiphanius’
Panarion. Most of these sects seem to have flourished on the
Eastern or Asiatic outskirts of the Roman Empire, although some of
them probably had settlements also in Egypt, Greece, Crete, and
Cyrene. As the first Ophites had contrived to make an amalgam of
the fervent and hysterical worship of nature in Anatolia with the
Jewish and Christian tenets, so no doubt these daughter sects
contrived to fit in with them the legends of the local cults among
which they found themselves. But such compromises were not likely
to last long when the Catholic Church began to define and enforce
the orthodox faith, and the Ophites seem to have been one of the
first to succumb. In the Vth century A.D., there were still Ophite
“colleges” to be found in the province of Bithynia; for Theocritus and
Evander, the bishops of Chalcedon and Nicomedia, “refuted” their
leaders publicly with such effect, says Praedestinatus, that they
afterwards broke into their “secret places” at the head of a furious
mob, drove away their priests, killed the sacred serpents, and
“delivered the people from that danger[263].” This is the last that we
hear of them as an organized sect, and although Justinian in A.D. 530
thought right to include them by name in his law against heretics, it is
probable that by then their opinions had long since passed into other
forms[264].
Probably one of the first changes to take place in the Ophite faith
was the withdrawal into the background of the serpent worship which
respect for the ancient cults of Asia Minor had imposed upon the
earlier members of the sect. In the diagram, Ophiomorphus does not
seem to have been depicted in his proper shape, although he may
perhaps be identified with the Leviathan there shown as surrounding
the terrestrial world. Those Ophites who wished to obtain proselytes
among Christian catechumens no doubt felt the advisability of not
insisting upon this conception, inasmuch as “the serpent” was the
figure under which the Oriental Christians loved to allude to the
Pagan worships which still opposed them in Asia Minor[265]. Hence
there arose much confusion among the Ophites themselves as to the
character of the serpent, and while some, according to Irenaeus,
asserted that Sophia the mother of Ialdabaoth herself became the
serpent[266], Theodoret, a very late witness, thinks that the Ophites of
his time held that Ophiomorphus, although originally the minister of
Sophia, had gone over to the other side, and had become the enemy
of mankind[267]. In this we may also, perhaps, see, if we will, the
effect of Egyptian influence upon the earlier Ophite teaching; for in
Egypt, the serpent Apep was always looked upon as the enemy of
Râ, the Sun-god, who was rightly considered the great benefactor of
humanity. It is no doubt due to the same influence that in one of the
documents of the Pistis Sophia—one part of which, as will be seen
later, was probably written for the furtherance of a late form of the
Ophite heresy—the serpent, while keeping his place in the Cosmos
as the great ocean which surrounds the earth, is transformed into the
outer darkness of the Canonical Gospels, and described as a huge
torture-chamber for the punishment of souls[268]. The same document
shows us how the Ophites, while adopting all the ideas of their
predecessors the Orphics as to the respective states of the initiated
and uninitiated after death,—including therein their reincarnation, the
draught from the lake of memory and the like—contrived to mix with
them the current astrological ideas of the time which made all these
events happen in an order determined by the motions of the
stars[269]. This tendency, already visible in Hippolytus’ time in the
Ophite sect which he calls the Peratae[270], will, however, be better
considered when we come to deal with the documents of the Pistis
Sophia themselves.
There remains to be said that the Gospel according to the Egyptians
mentioned above is the only apocryphal document that Hippolytus
directly attributes to the earlier Ophites or Naassenes. The sects
derived from them seem to have made use of a great number of
others, among which we find a Book of Baruch otherwise unknown
to us, The Paraphrase of Seth, the Gospels of Nicodemus, Philip,
and Thomas, together with a Gospel according to the Hebrews,
which may or may not have been identical with the one which
Hippolytus calls that according to the Egyptians[271]. Of these, the first
two are entirely lost, and the documents which we possess bearing
the name of the Gospel of Nicodemus relate the events of the
Crucifixion in much the same way as the Canonical Gospels, but add
thereto the visit of Jesus to Hades. A Gospel of Thomas, which is
also extant, contains only the account of miracles performed by
Jesus in His infancy, and therefore goes to controvert the Ophite
theory that Christos and Sophia only descended upon Him at His
baptism, and that up to that period He was as other men. It is
probable, however, that our copies of these Apocryphal Gospels
have been severely edited so as to expunge everything which
savoured of Gnostic teaching and may really have been partly or
wholly the work of Ophites[272]. Of the Gospel of Philip, Epiphanius
has preserved a short passage as follows:

“The Lord has revealed to me what the soul ought to say when
she goes to heaven, and how she ought to answer each of the
Powers on high. ‘I have known myself,’ she says, ‘and I have
collected myself from everywhere, and I have not begotten
children for the Archon, but I have rooted out his roots, and I
have collected the scattered members, and I know thee what
thou art. For I, she says, am from above[273].’ And thus he [i.e.
Philip] says, she is set free. But if, he says, she is found to have
begotten a son, she is retained below, until she can receive
again her own children, and draw them up to herself[274].”
Similar expressions are to be found in two of the documents of the
Pistis Sophia, and the abstinence from sexual intercourse which they
enjoin is direct and first-hand evidence rebutting the accusation of
promiscuous immorality which Epiphanius brings against the Ophites
or their related sects. Epiphanius attributes to the same sect of
“Gnostici” the use of a Gospel of Perfection which “others”—the
context shows that he means certain Ophites—“are not ashamed to
call the Gospel of Eve.” Of this he also preserves a single passage
as follows:

“I stood upon a high mountain, and I saw a huge man and

another who was mutilated [or perhaps only smaller, κολοβὸν]
and I heard a voice of thunder, and I drew near to hearken and
he spoke to me and said, ‘I am thou and thou art I; and where
thou art, there am I, and I am scattered through all things. And
whencesoever thou dost wish, collect me, and in collecting me,
thou dost collect thyself[275].’”

Is the greater and lesser man here the Adamas or Father-and-Son of

the Ophites, in which case the latter part of the passage doubtless
refers to the scattering of the light through the world of matter and
the necessity of its collection and return to the Godhead. The “I am
thou and thou art I” phrase is repeated in the Pistis Sophia by the
risen Jesus to His disciples[276], and seems to refer to the final union
of the perfected human soul with the Deity.
In addition to these books, the Ophites whom Irenaeus and
Hippolytus describe quoted freely from the Canonical books of the
Old Testament, from one of the apocryphal books of Ezra and from
the Book of Tobit, as also from such books of the Canonical New
Testament as the Gospels, including that of St John, and most of the
Pauline Epistles, including that to the Hebrews[277]. But it would be
going too far to say that they “accepted” these or attributed to them a
Divine origin, or thought them inspired in the sense in which the word
was used by the Catholic Church. On the contrary, Epiphanius
complains that they thought many of the contents of the Old
Testament Books at any rate were inspired only by Ialdabaoth and
the creators of the world of matter for the purpose of misleading
mankind[278]; and throughout they seem to have considered all the
Canonical Scriptures that they quote as on an equality with the
writings of Homer, Hesiod, the legendary Orpheus, and other
heathen writers such as Herodotus. Without attempting to deny or
question the historical truth of the facts or legends recorded by all
these authors, they regarded them merely as figures having an
allegorical or typical meaning, which they could interpret in any
manner they pleased, so as to make them accord with their own
preconceived theories. Thus the Naassenes when they found St
Luke quoting from the Proverbs of Solomon that “the just will fall
seven times and rise again,” declared that this referred to the
downward passage of man’s soul through the planetary heavens[279];
and Justinus, one of the Ophite teachers, finding a story in
Herodotus about Heracles and the serpent-tailed girl whom he met in
Scythia, said that it was a type of the generation of the universe by
the combination of the invisible and unforeseeing Demiurge and the
female principle or Sophia[280]. The same dialectic had already been
made use of by the Orphics, by Philo of Alexandria, and by Simon
Magus; but the Ophites seem to have been the first to apply it to all
literature. The full effect of this method of interpretation we shall see
later.
Generally speaking, it may be said that the Ophites seem to have
been the first to bring about any kind of amalgamation between the
popular religions of the Near East and the rising faith of Christianity.
By interpreting the “mysteries” or secret rites of Asia Minor and
elsewhere in their own sense, they supplied Christianity with a
mythology which it would otherwise have lacked and the absence of
which must always have proved a bar to its propagation among other
than Semitic peoples. At the same time they greatly exalted the
figure of Christ, who in their system became much less the personal
teacher and master of the Jewish-Christian communities[281] than the
angel or messenger of the Supreme Being sent from above in
pursuance of a vast scheme for the redemption of the human race.
In this capacity it went some way towards identifying the historical
Jesus with the great god of the Mysteries and towards giving the
sacraments of the newly-founded Church the secular authority of the
rites practised in them. The influence of the Ophite system or
systems upon the sects which succeeded them is at present hard to
define, but there can be little doubt that some of the documents,
which have come down to us in the Coptic MSS. before mentioned
and will be more fully described in Chapter X, can only be explained
by reference to them.
 CHAPTER IX
POST-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: VALENTINUS

It seems fairly plain that the originators of the Ophite teaching were
uneducated men[282]. A few quotations from Homer and Pindar,
probably familiar to anyone who listened to the Rhapsodists, are
indeed to be found in the anonymous author whom Hippolytus
quotes under the name of “the Naassene.” But the reading of the
learned of that day consisted not of poetry but of philosophy; and
there is no trace in his speculations of direct acquaintance with the
works of any philosopher whatever. This is the more striking because
Heraclitus of Ephesus, Zeno of Cyprus, and Cleanthes of Assos
might have been brought into court in support of his cosmogonical
ideas; and the Stoic philosophy was especially an Asiatic one,
having one of its principal homes in Tarsus, and therefore not very
far from Phrygia proper. Its cosmology as taught in Rome at the
period now under discussion[283], differed very little from that of the
earlier Ophites, and its theory of “seminal reasons” (λόγοι
σπερματικοὶ) or particles of fiery matter descending from heaven to
earth and there becoming formative principles, together with its belief
in metensomatosis or transmigration has many resemblances with
the Ophite scheme of redemption[284]. Yet the Naassene author in an
age when philosophy was most in fashion never appeals to the
authority of the founders of the Stoic school or of those followers of
theirs who must have been his contemporaries and countrymen; and
Hippolytus, whose own acquaintance with Greek philosophy was
superficial and hardly first-hand, in his summary of the Naassene
doctrine draws no parallel between the two. On the other hand, the
Naassene author perpetually refers to the Old Testament which he
seems to have known in the Peshitto or Syrian version, although, as
will have been seen, he by no means regards it from the Jewish
standpoint as a divinely inspired rule of life, and pushes down
Yahweh, its God, into a very inferior position in the scale of being. As
the date of the Peshitto has not yet been put further back than the
second century A.D.[285], this would lead one to suppose that it had
only recently come to the notice of the Naassene writer, who
probably welcomed it as a valuable source from which to draw
materials for spells and exorcisms. This excessive reverence for the
letter as apart from the spirit of a document is characteristic of the
magician of the early Christian centuries, and is further exemplified
in a magic papyrus of the IIIrd century A.D., now in the British
Museum, where “a number of single lines taken without any regard
to sense or on any discernible principle from the Iliad and Odyssey”
are arranged in a certain order for use as a fortune-telling book, and
appear in company with magical recipes for obtaining dreams,
compounding love philtres, and all the usual paraphernalia of a
wizard of the period[286]. Such a use of writings venerable for their
antiquity would never enter into the head of anyone endowed with
any literary sense, but seems natural enough to persons of limited
reading, to whom they form their sole material for study. In reading
into the lives of the Jewish patriarchs hidden allusions to the theories
of the origin of the universe and the destiny of man then current over
the whole Hellenistic world, the Naassenes did not behave differently
from our own Puritans of Cromwell’s time, who discovered in texts
like “Take the prophets of Baal, Let not one of them escape[287]!” a
justification for “knocking on the head out of hand,” the clergy of the
opposing party[288]. We may, if we please, picture to ourselves the
earlier Ophites as a handful of merchants, artizans, freedmen, and
slaves inclined by inherited custom to magical practices and to
ecstatic or hysterical forms of religion, and, as it were, intoxicated by
the new field of speculation which the translation of the Hebrew
Scriptures into their own tongue had opened to them. At the same
time, their anti-Semitic feeling, dating perhaps from the time of the
Maccabaean resistance which had materially contributed to the
downfall of the Syrian Empire, and considerably exacerbated by the
atrocities committed by the Jewish rebels at the close of the Ist
century A.D., must have forced them into an attitude in every way
opposed to Jewish national pretensions; while it is easy to
understand that such persons must have caught eagerly at any via
media which enabled them to reconcile the Jewish traditions, long
familiar to them through spells and charms, with the legends of the
Greek Mysteries, and at the same time protected them against the
social and moral obloquy attaching to open adherence to the Jewish
rites. Such considerations, perhaps, explain alike the immediate
success of St Paul’s preaching in Asia Minor, and the outburst of
activity among the Gnostics which followed close upon it[289].
The Gnostic speculations were, however, destined to pass out of the
hands of unlearned men. Although it was hardly likely to have been
noticed at the time, the day was past for national or particularist
religions having for their object the well-being of one nation or city;
and men’s relations to the Divine world were coming to be looked
upon as a matter concerning the individual rather than the State.
Alexander’s work in breaking down the barriers between people and
people was beginning to bear fruit in the intellectual as it had already
done in the political world, and the thoughtful were everywhere
asking themselves, as Tertullian tells us, not only whence man and
the world had come, but what was the meaning of the evil within the
world[290]. Along with this, too, had come a general softening of
manners which was extremely favourable to speculation on such
subjects, and to which the vagaries of the Caesars of the Julian
house have made us somewhat blind. A reign of terror might often
exist among the great families in the capital under a jealous or
suspicious Emperor, and the majority of the proletariat might there as
in other large towns be entirely given up to the brutal or obscene
amusements of the arena or the theatre. But in the provinces these
things had little effect on the working of the system set up under the
Empire; and the civilized world was for the first time, perhaps, in its
history, beginning to feel the full benefits of good government and
freedom from foreign invasion. It is quite true that the population
were then, as at the present day, leaving the country and flocking
into the towns, thereby acquiring new vices in addition to their old
ones; but this also led, as town life must always do, to increased
respect for the rights of their neighbours, and to the extension of the
idea of law and order rather than of the right of the strongest as the
governing principle of the universe. The Roman law, upon which the
jurisprudence of every civilized country is still based, first took
coherent shape in the reign of Hadrian; and Ulpian’s fundamental
maxim that before the law all men are free and equal was founded
on a conception of the rights of the individual very different from the
Oriental notion that all subjects high and low were the chattels of the
king.
In these circumstances, new ethical ideals had arisen which affected
all classes in the State. As Sir Samuel Dill has said in his charming
sketch of Roman manners under the Julian, Flavian and Antonine
emperors, “It has perhaps been too little recognized that in the first
and second centuries there was a great propaganda of pagan
morality running parallel to the evangelism of the Church[291].” But
this ethical propaganda was an entirely lay affair, and the work not of
the priests but of the philosophers[292]. It had, indeed, always been so
in the Hellenic world, and while we find it exciting no surprise that a
priest of the most sacred mysteries should be worse instead of better
than other men[293], it was the philosophers to whom was committed
what was later called the care of souls. Thus Alexander had
recourse, when prostrated by self-reproach after the killing of Clitus,
to the ministrations of Anaxarchus, who endeavoured to console him
with the sophism that kings are not to be judged like other men[294].
So, too, we hear of the Stoic philosopher, Musonius Rufus, when the
army of Vespasian was besieging Rome, accompanying the
Senate’s embassy to the troops of Antonius, and preaching to them
at the risk of his life upon the blessings of peace and the horrors of
war[295]. Seneca, also, when about to die, endeavours to stay his
friends’ lamentations by reminding them of the “rules of conduct” by
which alone they may expect consolation, and bequeaths to them
the example of his life[296]; while the “Stoic saint,” Thrasea, when the
sentence of death reaches him, is occupied in listening to a
discourse of Demetrius the Cynic on the nature of the soul and its
separation from the body[297]. This shows an attitude of mind very
different from the merely magical or, as we should say, superstitious
belief in the efficacy of spells and ceremonies; and the example of
Epictetus bears witness that it was that of slaves as well as of
senators.
Gnosticism, therefore, was bound to become ethical as well as
gnostical, or, in other words, to insist on the efficacy of conduct as
well as of knowledge, so soon as it came into contact with thinkers
trained in philosophy. Where it did so, in the first instance, cannot be
told with any degree of certainty; but all probability points to
Alexandria as one of the places where the post-Christian Gnosticism
first made alliance with philosophic learning. Not only was Alexandra
the natural meeting-place of Greeks and Orientals, but it was at the
early part of the IInd century a great deal more the centre of the
intellectual world than either Athens or Rome. Although Ptolemy IX
Physcon is said to have expelled from it the philosophers and
scholars of the Museum, they seem to have returned shortly
afterwards, and in the meantime their dispersion in the neighbouring
cities and islands, where most of them must have supported
themselves by teaching, probably did a good deal towards diffusing
the taste for philosophy over a wider area than before. In Philo’s
time, in particular, the Platonic philosophy had gained such a hold in
the city that he, though a leader of the Jews, had had to assimilate it
as best he might[298], and, as we have seen, to bring it more or less
into harmony with the traditional beliefs of his own people. A century
later we see the same thing occurring with the now rising sect of
Christians; and a school of Christian philosophy was founded in
Alexandria under the leadership of Pantaenus, the predecessor in
office of the famous Clement of Alexandria[299]. If we may judge from
the writings of this last, the expressed object of this school was to
instil a knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy into Christian
teachers, to bring about which it attempted to show that, while both
philosophy and Christian theology alike aimed at the discovery of
truth, the valuable parts of the philosophic doctrines were borrowed
or derived from the writings held sacred by Jews and Christians[300].
Nor were the Alexandrians in the least likely to refuse a hearing to
any new faith however wild. The leading place which Alexandria had
gained among the markets of the world brought within its gates the
adherents of every religion then known, and Jewish merchants and
Christian artizans there mixed with Buddhist monks and fetish-
worshippers from Central Asia, while the terms on which they met
compelled a wide tolerance for one another’s opinions, and
predisposed its citizens to a practical amalgam of several apparently
conflicting creeds[301].
It was into this atmosphere that Gnosticism entered at least as early
as the reign of Hadrian. Who was answerable for its first introduction
there we have no means of knowing, nor do we even know with any
certainty what form Egyptian Gnosticism first took[302]. One would
imagine that the Hellenizing tendency of the Samaritans might have
brought to Alexandria the doctrines of Simon Magus, but there is no
direct evidence to that effect. The case is different with Antioch,
where one Saturninus or Satornilus—the name is spelt differently by
Irenaeus and Hippolytus—seems to have put forth, at the period
referred to, a quasi-Christian system having some likeness to that of
the Ophites, its chief distinguishing feature being its hatred of
Judaism and its God, for whose overthrow it declared Christ to have
been sent[303]. Like the Ophites, Saturninus rigidly opposed the
commerce of the sexes, declaring marriage and generation to be
alike the work of Satan, the declared enemy of the world-creating
angels, and of their leader the God of the Jews[304]. But the followers
of this Saturninus seem to have been few in number, and although
all the later heresiologists preserved the memory of his teaching, it is
probable that the sect itself did not long survive its founder[305].
Basilides, whose name is associated with that of Saturninus by
Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius, who all make him a fellow
disciple with Saturninus of Menander, the continuator or successor of
Simon Magus[306], certainly flourished under the same reign at
Alexandria, where he taught an extremely complicated doctrine,
declaring that between the unknown Father of All and this world
there was interposed a series of 365 heavens corresponding in
number to the days of the year, the chief of them being called
Abraxas, the letters of which word have that numerical value[307]. This
is the account of Irenaeus, not materially varied by any of the other
early writers on heresy, with the exception of Hippolytus, who gives
us a long account of the doctrine of Basilides and his son Isidore,
which according to their own account they derived from Matthias, the
Apostle who replaced Judas and who received it secretly from Jesus
Himself[308]. From Hippolytus, we learn that Basilides’ complete or
final teaching declared that there was a time when nothing existed—
 “neither matter, nor substance, nor the Unsubstantial, nor simple,
nor compound, nor the Intelligible, nor the Unintelligible, nor that
which can be comprehended by the senses, nor that which
cannot be so comprehended, nor man, nor angel, nor god, nor
anything which can be named”—

and that this God-Who-Was-Not willed to make a world[309]. This act

of volition, exercised in Hippolytus’ words “without will or mind or
consciousness[310],” produced the Seed of the World which contained
within itself all the future universe, as the grain of mustard-seed
contains the roots, stem, branches, leaves, and innumerable other
seeds of the future plant[311]. In this Seed was “a Sonhood, threefold
in all things, of the same substance with the God-Who-Was-Not and
generated from non-existing things[312].” Of this threefold Sonhood,
one part was subtle or finely divided like aether or air, one coarser,
and one which needed purification; and he goes on to describe how
the finer part immediately upon the projection of the Seed, burst forth
and flew upwards until it reached the Non-Existent-One, towards
whom, Hippolytus says, “every nature strains,” on account of “its
beauty and majesty[313].” The coarser part of the Sonhood attempted
to imitate the first, but failed to do so until helped by the Holy Spirit
who served it as the wing does the bird; but although the second
Sonhood thereby attained beatitude, the Holy Spirit could not enter
into the Godhead along with him “because it (or she) was of a
different substance from him and had nothing of his nature[314].” She
was therefore left near it, purified and sanctified by her contact with
the Sonhood as a jar which has once contained perfume still
preserves its savour[315]. As for the third Sonhood, it remained in the
Seed of the World, which thereafter gave birth to the Great Archon or
Ruler, who is the Demiurge or Architect of the Universe and fashions
all cosmic things. This Archon makes out of the things below him a
Son who by the arrangement of the God-Who-Was-Not is greater
and wiser than himself, whence the Archon causes him to sit at his
right hand[316]. This Son is in effect Christ, who reveals to the Archon
the existence of the worlds above him, and sends the Gospel (here
personified) into the world so that by it the third Sonhood might be
purified and thus raised to union with the God-Who-Was-Not.
There is no need to follow further the system of Basilides, nor to
describe the extremely complicated tangle of worlds, principalities,
powers, and rulers, including the 365 heavens and their Archon or
ruler Abraxas, which Basilides interposes between this earth and the
Godhead. M. Amélineau has endeavoured to show that, in this,
Basilides was borrowing from the ancient Egyptian religion which he
imagines to have been still flourishing in the Egypt of the second
Christian century[317]. It may be so; and, although M. Amélineau’s
proofs seem hardly strong enough to bear the weight of the
conclusions he would draw from them, it may be conceded that in
the Ogdoad and the Hebdomad of which we hear so much in
Hippolytus’ account of Basilides’ teaching, we have a distinct echo of
the extraordinary arithmetic of the Pharaonic or old Egyptian
theology, wherein we are constantly meeting with an Ennead or
“company” of nine gods which, as M. Maspero has shown,
sometimes consists of eight, sometimes of ten, and sometimes of a
still more discrepant number of individuals[318]. But Basilides’ system
was never intended for popular use; for he himself said, according to
Irenaeus, that only one out of a thousand or two out of ten thousand
could understand it, and that his disciples should keep their
adherence to it strictly secret, seeking to know all things, but
themselves remaining unknown[319]. Its interest for us here lies in the
fact that Valentinus who transformed post-Christian Gnosticism, as
will presently be seen, from an esoteric or mystical explanation of
Pagan beliefs[320] into a form of Christianity able to compete seriously
with the Catholic Church, was himself a native of Egypt, that he
studied the Platonic philosophy in Alexandria[321], and that he must
have resided there at the same time as Basilides, who was slightly
older than he, and died before Valentinus’ doctrine was
promulgated[322]. It is therefore hardly possible that Valentinus should
not have known of Basilides’ teaching and have borrowed from it,
even without the internal evidence of borrowing afforded by a
comparison of the two systems[323]. The almost total silence of the
Fathers as to Basilides’ school after that of Valentinus became
famous is to be accounted for, as Matter points out, by supposing
that the hearers of Basilides, probably few in number, came over to
him in a body[324].
Basilides, therefore, forms a very important link between Simon
Magus and the pre-Christian Gnostics—with whom Basilides was
connected, as we have seen, through his master and Simon Magus’
successor Menander—on the one hand, and Valentinus on the other.
But his teaching also explains to us why so many of the features of
the Ophite doctrines also reappear in the Valentinian heresy. For the
three Sonhoods of Basilides, although described in a fantastic and
almost unintelligible way by Hippolytus, seem to correspond in idea
with the First and Second Man and the Christos of the Naassene
writer; while the Holy Spirit, who is of inferior essence and therefore
remains below the Supreme Godhead, can hardly be distinguished
from the Sophia or Prunicos who in the Ophite scheme plays so
large a part in the work of the redemption of the light. The power of
the Great Archon or Ruler of this World is also said in Hippolytus’
account of the Basilidean teaching, to rise no higher than the
firmament, which was placed between the hypercosmic spaces
where soared the Boundary Spirit, and the ordered universe[325],—a
statement which strictly corresponds to the limit placed on the power
and authority of the Ophite Ialdabaoth. The Archon of Basilides who
must, I think, be intended for Yahweh the God of the Jews is, like
Ialdabaoth, ignorant that there is anything above him[326]; and
although he differs from his prototype in being better taught by his
Son, this is easily explained by the higher position occupied by both
Jews and Christians in Alexandria than in Phrygia. It is significant
also that the mystic and probably cryptogrammatic name Caulacau
which the Naassene writer uses for the Saviour of his system is
applied to the corresponding person in the system of Basilides[327].
The popularity and success that attended Valentinus’ own teaching
may be judged from the pains that the Fathers took to oppose it. The
five books Against Heresies so often quoted above were written by
Irenaeus with the avowed intention of refuting Valentinus’ disciples.
Hippolytus, who aimed at a more encyclopaedic account of the
heresies of his time, devotes more space to the Valentinian sect than
to any other. Tertullian not only repeatedly gibes at them after his
manner when treating of other matters, but composed a special book
against them still extant, from which we learn of the existence of
other treatises against them written by Justin Martyr, Miltiades a
Christian sophist, and one Proculus, all which are now lost[328]. Those
near to Valentinus in date seem hardly to have considered him an
enemy of Christianity. Clement of Alexandria quotes several
passages from the writings of him and his followers, and although it
is always with the view of contradicting the statements of his fellow-
countryman, he yet does so without any of the heat displayed by
other controversialists[329]. On the other hand, the orthodox who
wrote long after Valentinus was in his grave are most bitter against
him. Epiphanius, who seldom had a good word for any one, calls
him, with some justice, the chief of heretics[330]; Philaster of Brescia
says he was more a follower of Pythagoras than of Christ, and that
he led captive the souls of many[331]; Praedestinatus, that he and his
followers throughout the East severely wounded the Church of
God[332]; while Eusebius in his Life of Constantine produces an
Imperial edict against the Valentinians and other heretics, issued,
according to him, some time before the baptism of its promulgator,
and ordering that they shall no longer be allowed to assemble
together and that their “houses of prayer” shall be confiscated to the
use of the Catholic Church[333]. It was probably in pursuance of some
such law, which also enjoined, as Eusebius tells us, the search for
and destruction of their writings, that a conventicle of the
Valentinians at Callinicum on the Eastern frontier of the Empire was
burned by the Christian mob headed by their bishop and monks in
A.D. 388[334]. The same scenes were no doubt enacted in other parts
of the Empire; and we may, perhaps, see in the fury of the
persecutors the measure of their fear.
Yet there is little in the Valentinian doctrine as described by the
Fathers to account for the popularity that it evidently attained.
Valentinus, like all the Gnostics, believed in one Supreme Source of
all things; but he from the first threw over the extremely philosophical
idea of Basilides, which some writers would derive from
Buddhism[335], of a non-existent God as the pinnacle of his system.
To fill the gap thus left, he returned to the older conception of the
Ophites, and postulated a Bythos or Deep as the origin of all. But
this “Unknowable Father” was by no means the mere abstraction
without direct action upon the world or man that he was in the
systems of the Ophites and of Basilides. As to the mode of his
action, however, a schism—or rather, a difference of opinion—early
manifested itself among his followers. Some of them gave to Bythos
a female consort called, as Irenaeus, and, following him, Tertullian,
tell us, Silence (Σιγή) and Grace (Χάρις), from whom all the
subsequent aeons or manifestations of the Godhead descended[336].
Irenaeus partly explains away this by the statement that Bythos or
the Perfect Aeon dwelt for boundless ages in rest and solitude
(ἡσυχίᾳ), but that there existed with him Ennoia or Thought. Whether
this last part of the statement was or was not thrown in so as to force
a parallel between the system of Valentinus and that of Simon
Magus from whom the orthodox insisted all later heresiarchs derived
their teaching, cannot now be said. But Hippolytus, who, while not
disputing this derivation, is just as anxious to show that Valentinus
was also much indebted to the Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy
learned by him at Alexandria, tells us that there were other
Valentinians who insisted that the Father (or Bythos) was without
spouse (ἀσύζυγος) not feminine (ἄθηλυς) and lacking nothing
(ἀπροσδεής); and that Valentinus himself said that Bythos was
“unbegotten (ἀγέννητος) not subject to conditions of space or time,
having no counsellor, nor any substance that could be
comprehended by any figure of speech[337].” Herein either Hippolytus
or Valentinus seems to have been attracted by the ideas of the Neo-
Pythagorean school of Alexandria, who indulged in many
arithmetical theories about the Monad or Final Unity which went on
producing male and female (i.e. odd and even) numbers alternately
until it arrived at the perfect harmony of ten[338]. Yet those who study
ancient religions by the comparative method will be more inclined to
see in this diversity of opinion among the Valentinians a hesitation
between the old idea current, as we have seen, in the Eastern
Mediterranean, that a god may be bisexual and therefore capable of
producing descendants without female assistance and the ancient
Semitic view (due perhaps to the fact that Semitic languages know
only two genders) which divided the Godhead like everything else
into male and female[339].
However this may be, all the Valentinian schools seem to have
agreed upon the emanation which immediately proceeded from the
Deep or the Father of All. From Bythos, either alone or with the help
of Sige[340], there proceeded Mind or Nous (Νοῦς), called also
Monogenes[341] and the Father, the beginning of all subsequent
things. This Nous is said to be “equal and like” to him from whom he
had emanated, and by himself capable of comprehending the
greatness of Bythos[342]. With Nous there also came forth a female
Power named Aletheia or Truth (Ἀλήθεια), and this pair gave birth to
a second syzygy, viz. Logos or the Word (Λόγος) and Zoe or Life
(Ζωὴ), who in their turn produced a third pair, namely: Anthropos,
Man (Ἄνθρωπος) and Ecclesia, the Church (Ἐκκλησία)[343]. The later
Valentinians, from whom Irenaeus quotes, added to these six aeons,
Bythos and his spouse Sige, thus making up the originating Ogdoad
or eightfold Godhead again called the root and substance of all
[subsequent] things[344]. Valentinus himself, however, probably did
not give Bythos a spouse and held that he remained apart from and
uplifted above his six principal emanations[345].
This subdivision of the Divine, resembling as it does the system of
Simon Magus before described, may seem at first sight incredibly
foolish and complicated, especially when it is considered that these
“aeons,” as Valentinus calls them, might be considered not only as
powers but as worlds. So it did to the Fathers, who are never tired of
pouring contempt upon it. Tertullian makes merry over the
Valentinian conception of a universe with an endless series of
heavens piled one over the other, as he says, like the “Lodgings to
let” of a Roman insula or tenement house, or, had he ever seen one,
of a New York skyscraper[346]. Irenaeus jokes cumbrously, comparing
the Valentinian aeons to vegetables as if, he says, a gourd should
bring forth a cucumber and this in its turn a melon[347]. Hippolytus,
indeed, cannot indulge in such jeers because to do so would have
stamped him in the opinion of all the learned of his time as an
uneducated barbarian, his pet theory of Gnosticism being that all its
doctrine was a plagiarism from the Greek philosophers and notably
from Plato. Yet he never loses an opportunity of calling Valentinus’
opinions “worthless”; and goes out of his way to tack on to them the
system of the Jewish magician Marcus, who, if we can believe the
statements of the Fathers, exploited the rising sense of religion of
the age for his own immoral or interested purpose[348].
Yet a statement that Tertullian lets drop, as if accidentally, may teach
us to beware of taking Valentinus’ supposed opinions on the nature
of these hypostases or Persons of the Godhead more literally than
he did himself. In his treatise against the Valentinians the “furious
African barrister” is led away by the exigencies of his own rhetoric to
tell us that there were some among them who looked upon all this
elaborate description of the emanations of the Ogdoad as a figure of
speech. All the aeons of the Ogdoad were according to them merely
attributes or names of God. When, they said, God thought of
producing offspring, He thereby acquired the name of Father; and
because his offspring was true, that of Truth; and because He
wished to appear in human form, he was called Man; and because
He assembled His attributes in His mind and selected from them
those most proper for His purpose, they were called the Church; and
as His only (or unique) Son was, as it were, uttered or sent forth to
mankind, He was called the Word; and from His powers of salvation,
Life; and so on[349]. As we have seen, Valentinus did not invent de
novo his conception of the Godhead, which bears besides evident
marks of having been adopted with slight modification from that of
Simon Magus and the Ophites. This statement of Tertullian gives us
ground therefore for supposing that he may really have held the
same views respecting the Divine Nature as the Catholic Church,
merely giving an allegorical explanation of the earlier opinions to
convince his hearers that the teaching of the Apostles was not so
subversive of or inconsistent with the way of thinking of the ancient
theologians and philosophers as some of them thought. Clement of
Alexandria shows similar comprehensiveness when he said that in
the Christian faith there are some mysteries more excellent than
others—or, in other words, degrees in knowledge and grace[350]—,
that the Hellenic philosophy fits him who studies it for the reception
of the truth[351], and that the Christian should rejoice in the name of
Gnostic, so long as he understands that the true Gnostic is he who
imitates God as far as possible[352]. He even goes further, and
himself uses the Gnostic method of personification of abstract
qualities, as when he says that Reverence is the daughter of Law[353],
and Simplicity, Innocence, Decorum, and Love, the daughters of
Faith[354]. If Valentinus used similar metaphors, it by no means